The Funeral of a Good Girl
by tempest-races
Summary: Love is messy and irrational and stupid and it hurts, but we do it anyway. You don't get a choice who you love, or when, or even if you should. Sometimes you just fall in love and get taken along for the ride.
1. Of Relations and Getting Lost

**Author**: Tempest-Races  
**Title:** The Funeral of a Good Girl**  
Disclaimer:** All characters from The Fast and the Furious belong to Universal Studios and their subsidiaries and any other original copyright holders. New characters found here belong to me. I do this for love, not money, and no profit will be made from this story.  
**Summary:** Two weeks of one hot summer is all she's got. At the end of her two weeks she says good-bye to her former self with 'The Funeral of a Good Girl'. But when, years later, reality intrudes into her idealized memories of the summer she 'went away' how will she cope? She set him free once, and as the old adage told her, as he didn't come back he was never hers. Can she go through that again, if she has no choice? If lives depend on it?  
**Rating: **NC-17, technically. Edited to M for the fanfiction dot net audience. Sorry peeps, gotta follow the rules.  
**Feedback:** Yes please! I'm incredibly tough so there's no need to be gentle. Please be perfectly honest with me. The pickier you want to be with me the better. But just letting me know what you think is ok too.  
**Warning: **This story is not meant to be taken seriously. Doing so may prove hazardous to your brain. That's my way of saying this is something I'm writing because I had to write something fun again, or go out of my mind. If you want to read a serious piece by me, check out Catalyst or A Night to Remember. I'm just having a good time here. This fiction will have drama, and racing, and swearing, and all kinds of other good stuff. It's sort of Mary Sue. The story is actually written as an NC-17 fic, but to abide by the rules, when I get to the NC-17 content I'm going to have to snip it out. Onward to the fic.

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By _TempestRaces_

Chapter One** – Of Relations and Getting Lost**

**"Baby you'll be rockin' my world at the funeral of a good girl."**

With a sigh a feminine arm reached out of the cozy bed coverings and silenced the squawking alarm. Why did it feel like six am came earlier and earlier every day? _I need a god damn vacation! _She rolled out of bed and tossed on some sweats before tossing a uniform in her bag and wandering out to the bathroom. She was out of her house a mere fifteen minutes after her alarm had woken her up. Ten minutes after that she was in the gym. Monday, weight workout morning. _Oh joy_! Forty five minutes and a shower later she was dressed in a uniform which, to the untrained eye, looked clean. To someone who knew what it should look like, it was totally covered in melted in grease stains which even hot water and a cocktail of laundry aids wouldn't remove.

As she parked her Nissan Altima in the rear of the body shop and walked around it, heading into the garage of the local Chevy dealership she sighed again, more heartfelt than ever before. _At least it's only one day until May first, it's almost time!_ The thought made her smile when her previous thoughts had been giving her a headache. But it being almost time to take the summer cars out of storage was enough to make almost all headaches disappear.

She liked her job. Wasn't implying that she didn't. But she was ready for a break from the monotony. It had been two years since she'd had more than a long weekend off. After the vacation of two years before she hadn't bothered to take another one. Nothing was likely to come close to comparing to the summer she _went away_. She stopped in front of her tool box, the keys to unlock it stuck between her fingers. It was easy to allow her mind to drift back. The two years might as well have been two days for how it felt. She could still see that summer, could still feel the warm pacific waters, could still feel the heat of the California sun, could still _taste_ it. Taste the barbeque, taste the pasta, taste his skin. It felt like life, like she had just lived it last week, not almost two years ago.

Two years ago she had gone to visit her cousin. It had been a life altering experience. He lived in the USA, she in Canada. He was excitable, she wasn't. He had ADD, so he had his excuse. She spent too much time analyzing every little thing in her life before she ever acted on any impulse and had an attention that could span for hours. About all they had in common was a love of cars. Both were mechanics. He, by experience only. Her, by education. He was very talented, a genius. She was good because she was smart. Book learning. She shared his instinct for what would work when, but she wasn't as good at following her instincts, not like him.

She had never been farther from home than the next province over, so when her cousin offered her a free place to stay if she just found her own way to Los Angeles she jumped at the chance. She had grown up in 'the big city' of her neck of the woods. That wasn't saying much. The big, capital city she grew up in had a population of forty thousand people. Los Angeles, on the other hand, had a population of four million in the city, and over twelve million in the whole incorporated area. Her big city upbringing hadn't done a thing to prepare her for a real big city. Not a thing. Not that any of that stopped her from longing for a real big city experience. There was no way she could ever have afforded to go on her own. So when he offered her the chance to stay with his new 'family' she decided to take him up on it. They hadn't seen each other since they were children, and she didn't know the people he lived with in any capacity, but that got pushed to the back of her mind. All that mattered was she was going to Los Angeles.

She took three weeks off work, planning a week to drive there and back and two weeks to hang out with her cousin and meet his friends. As it would turn out, it wouldn't be nearly enough. But she would have to settle for what it got her. She wasn't looking for a new life, just to take a vacation. Wishing she could afford to pack up her life and take off for parts unknown permanently didn't make it feasible or practical.

If she wasn't happy with the life she had, at the very least she was content. She liked her job, had good friends, had hobbies. She had a i_life/i_. It wasn't wild or wonderful, but it was hers and it was all she knew. Driving from her island home all the way down across the United States was about the wildest thing she had ever done. Well, other than oblige people who picked fights with her at the local dive that she was known to frequent, and drive her car way too fast down public roads. Both of those things were so ingrained that she didn't even really think of them as wild or crazy. That was just her, that was life.

Chucking two suitcases in what passed for a back seat in her car and driving into another country alone was a different manner. But she did it. It took three days of driving sixteen hour stretches to get there. When she rolled into Los Angeles city limits she couldn't for the life of her figure out where to go from the highway. She slid her cell phone out of the case clipped to the passenger side sun visor and flipped it open. Hitting a button on the side, she obeyed the on screen command and spoke the name of the person she wanted to call. The phone dialled. A stranger answered.

"Yeah?" came the curt greeting.

"Um hey, is Jesse around?"

"No, he ain't." The stranger didn't elaborate. Just 'no he ain't' in a snarled tone.

"Ok, can you tell me where I can reach him? This is his cousin. He's expecting me and I'm lost trying to find him."

A masculine sigh full of impatience answered her statement. "Where are you, exactly?"

"It says Riverside Drive and I'm coming up on some scary lookin' intersection."

"You're in a sweet fuckin' load of trouble if that's a scary lookin' intersection to you!"

She sighed forcefully. "No shit. That would be how I came to be lost and callin' my cousin for help, not callin' some ignorant prick to get abused, a'ight?" Her fear and frustration with being lost made her short with the stranger. Not that attitudes like his didn't always piss her off, but with her nerves so frayed, it took less than ever to set her off.

After her insult he got even shorter with her, but didn't hang up, much to her relief. "Stay in the middle lane, watch for a sign to exit onto Dayton Avenue."

"Ok, got it, I'm exiting now."

"How fuckin' fast are you goin' if you're exiting already?" A new tinge of respect filled the question. It was just a tinge but it was there.

"I'm going about one eighty, but I have to be to stand a chance of getting in front of any of these people."

"One hundred and eighty miles an hour. That's how fast you're goin'?"

"No, shit, sorry. I forgot about the whole miles to kilometres thing. I'm going one eighty in kilometres. It's about a hundred and ten miles an hour. I'm comin' up on a slightly less scary intersection."

"Exit onto the one ten and get in the outside lane."

"Ok." She stopped talking to focus on her driving. "Ok, that's done."

"Exit again, left onto South Avenue fifty. You got about a mile before that exit, like as not."

"Ok. Thanks for the help."

"Yeah, sure."

Another short answer. She had to wonder why he hadn't just told her to go fuck herself right off the bat. It was clear he really didn't want to be helping her find her way off the freeways and into Jesse's neighbourhood. She turned on her left blinker and sped up to get in front of a large black sedan. She executed the left the voice on her cell phone had indicated. "Ok, I'm on the fifty."

"That was fast."

"That's how I move," she shot back. It then occurred to her that this stranger on the other end of her call could chose to take that two ways. At face value or as a double entendre. He chuckled. The potential double meaning hadn't gone over his head.

"We'll see about that when you get here. Turn right onto Echo Park Boulevard."

There was another pause while she waited to find the street and make her turn. "Ok, done." She didn't touch his other comment. Not when she had no idea who she was talking to.

"Look for a white house on the right with a blue Maxima and a white Jetta in the driveway." He seemed to think about what he'd said for a moment. "That's a medium sized, blue, four door Nissan and a medium sized white Volkswagon sedan."

"Thank you!" she drawled sarcastically. "I know what the fuck a Maxima and Jetta are. Jesus, who the fuck do you think you're talkin' to?"

"I got no idea other than you're the kid's cousin. You see the house yet?"

"Yeah, just rollin' up on it now."

"Well, that's me on the porch. Welcome to Echo Park, Los Angeles."

She shut her phone with a snap and an irate sigh and without bothering to say good-bye. What a welcome. Lost, stressed and talked through it by the most snappish person she had ever talked to. She parked the car and took a deep breath. This was it. She had to meet the friends without the benefit of Jesse. He wasn't even home. Where the heck did he go? He knew about when she was planning on getting into town.

"No shit," he growled as he watched the car he had guided in park at the curb in front of the house. The windows were deeply smoked, not allowing so much as a glance inside. The body of the car was painted elaborately as a lightning storm. The rims were only sixteens but they were chrome and of a tasteful five spoke design he would have found appealing, had they been eighteens. As was only proper, he mused to himself. Why hadn't Jesse forewarned them that his Canadian cousin owned such a nice tuner car? Had the kid honestly thought that the fact was irrelevant? The door swung outward and a booted foot immerged. This occurred on the right hand side of the vehicle and the model of car was firmly confirmed to him.

"Skyline," he hissed out loud to himself. What the fuck had Jesse been thinking, keeping that little detail from the whole team? As he watched, finally the whole girl immerged and became visible over the roofline of her car. She leaned on the roof and looked at him. At least, he assumed that was what she was doing. She had mirrored sunglasses on.

"Do I have the right house, for sure? Jesse Adams lives here?"

Her accent was odd. Not Southern and not New York or Boston Eastern either. It was subtle but it was there. "Yeah," he growled back at her. "You his cousin?"

"Yeah, didn't I already tell you that?"

He shrugged. "Maybe. Nice ride."

"Thanks. I like it well enough." She leaned into the open car door and immerged a minute later with two bags, a duffle and kitbag which had 'Nissan' embroidered on the side. "Am I stayin' here, or was Jesse supposed to make other arrangements for me?"

"You're stayin' here, far as I know. Come on, I'll show you where you can toss your stuff." He headed into the house and she followed him. He turned back to her a second later. "I'm Vince, by the way."

"Hey," she answered.

"You ain't gonna tell me your name now?"

"I just assumed that Jess woulda told you all that when he told you he was askin' me to come down."

"Well he didn't, so…" She sighed at him. It looked like she didn't want to tell him her name. "You got a problem with me knowin' who you are?"

She seemed to gather her resolve. "No, not at all. I'm Tempest," she admitted.

He had picked up on the small pause before she'd admitted her name, like she still didn't _want _to admit her name to him. Once he heard it he understood why. He could only imagine if he found Vincent bad, how annoying she found being named Tempest. That didn't stop the snort of amusement from leaving his body.

"That amuse you for some reason?" she asked, a hand on her cocked hip and one eyebrow lifted toward her hairline in annoyance.

"Naw, not at all," he lied before heading for the basement stairs. "You're gonna be rooming down here. The couch in the main room is a sofa bed." They dismounted the stairs into the room in question. "I sleep in there, Leon in there, and Jesse in there." He indicated three bedrooms in turn. "That's the john. If you're particular you might wanna use the one upstairs. Mia keeps it cleaner than the one down here."

She couldn't help her morbid curiosity and stuck her head into the downstairs bathroom. She reared back a second later. "Which room upstairs is the washroom?"

"First door on the right," he replied with a chuckle.

"Duly noted." There was no way she was sitting on the toilet in 'bachelor john'. It just wasn't happening.

"You could always ask Letty if you could use her room upstairs while you're here. Ain't like she uses it too much herself. All her shit's in Dom's room anyway."

"We'll see how it goes." If she was staying two weeks it would likely go toward her cleaning the bathroom down here for them. She wasn't haulin ass up two flights of stairs every time she needed to take a piss in the middle of the night and she wasn't too impressed with the idea of bunking so far away from Jesse, the only person in the place she knew.

"Yeah, toss your bags and I'll show you how to get to the garage. That's where you'll find Jesse."

She obeyed him, throwing her bags on the floor at one end of the sofa. When she turned around it was to find him watching her intently. "What?"

"Nothin'," he replied with a shake of his head. She didn't look a thing like Jesse, that was for sure. The kid had dirty blonde, straight hair cut medium around his head. His cousin had almost black, curly hair reaching half way down her back. Jesse had blue eyes, she had green. Jesse was fairly slight and tall, standing six foot two. The cousin was about five eight, which was tall for a female, and built. She obviously worked out, a lot. Jesse favoured jeans and tee shirts with an almost skateboard punk look to them most times. The girl in front of him was wearing a pair of faded, ripped jeans and a black tank top. She was pale now, but you could tell she had been deeply tanned at one point. Jesse didn't spend enough time away from his cars and computer to ever get any sun. "Let's go."

"Yes sir! Lead the way sir."

"You got one hell of a smart mouth."

"I know," she smirked. She did. It wouldn't take long for them to all figure it out. Kept her life interesting, that smart mouth. She was always trying to get out of the trouble it got her into.

He didn't answer, just shook his head as he started climbing the stairs. He walked through the house and right back out the front door. He stopped beside the blue Nissan. "Ok, get in."

"Un un. I'm takin' my own ride."

"You don't know where to go."

"You can show me."

"I ain't ridin' bitch with you."

"Then you go and I'll follow you. We'll take two cars."

"Just get in the damn car."

"No." She shook her head and moved around to the driver's side of her own ride. "I can follow you."

"Why can't we just take my car?"

"'Cause Jesse never saw my ride before and he doesn't know I even got it so I want to surprise him. I don't want to show up without it."

"So that's why he didn't tell us you were a tuner too."

She looked puzzled. "I can't tell you why he didn't tell you I was into cars and modifying. I work in a garage back home and Jesse knew that I raced a bit. He just knew I did it in my RX-7. The Skyline hasn't been around long and I didn't tell him about it on purpose. He didn't tell you guys that I work in a garage?"

"No." Vince looked just as puzzled as she did. "What do you do?"

"I'm a technician. What did you think I did when I said I worked in a garage?"

"I dunno," Vince said before clamming up.

It was clear to her that he thought she worked customer service or was a secretary or something. "Doesn't Letty work in the garage with Jesse?"

"Yeah. So?"

"Why is it your first thought when you find out I work in one is that I can't be a mechanic?"

"Dunno. Are we gonna go find the rest of the team or what?" He changed the subject awkwardly.

"Team?"

"Yeah, Dominic, Letty, Jesse, Leon, the team. Jesse didn't tell you about the team?"

"Just that he lived with some people. He didn't phrase it like it was some sort of dorm for a team he was on."

"It's not. It's hard to explain. Come on, I'll ride with you." He said it with a sigh that illustrated how put out he was to make the offer.

She decided not to argue any further. She really didn't want to try and follow him through the unfamiliar streets. She knew without asking that he would go out of his way to make following him hard. He obviously didn't like not getting his way. They headed out after she left the curb. He gave her directions and she followed them.

"So, you didn't do too much to your car inside," Vince tried to make conversation.

"All I really got done was the paint job and rims to be honest. It took so long to get the car back from paint there just wasn't time to do anything else." She looked at Vince, who had opened his mouth and was about to make a comment. She cut him off. "And before you start in at me about all show and no go, the guy who sponsored the paint job could only do it in the month right after I got the car so I had to let him have it before I started anything else."

"You coulda let him go and found someone else."

"I coulda, but he's the best and I only wanted the best."

He just nodded in answer. He understood, but it still went against a lot of what he was about to be riding in a car with a hugely expensive paint job and a bone stock engine. There were a few minutes silence only punctuated by his curt directions. "So, this a GT-R?"

"Of course."

"What year is it?"

"'90."

"Why so old?"

"It's the newest one that was legal in Canada when I bought it. It's likely not even legal down here because it hasn't been modified to pass crash tests."

"Hope you don't get stopped for it then."

"Me too," she answered before taking the next turn he indicated. The turn landed her in a parking area of a single story brick building. She assumed that the brick building was their destination and got out of the car, hitching up her pants when she stood up. She hadn't bothered to replace her too large clothes since she had decided to hit the gym hard core again and all her pants sat low on her hips. She didn't see the way Vince watched the denim slide back up over the lacy strip of her panties that had been showing. The first step she took the pants were slid right back down from whence they came. She gave up with an internal sigh. "This the door?" She turned back to Vince to ask.

"Yeah," he answered, his tone slightly rusty. She gave him a strange look but didn't stop to question the whys, just entered the garage.

"Jesse Adams, get that white ass over here this second!" she hollered into the garage.

_She's got some set of balls on her anyway_, Vince mused. No one walked into Dominic's garage unannounced and hollered at the top of their lungs and got away with it. Especially not since Dominic had gotten out of prison. He hadn't even been out that long, only about six months. Just as he was thinking on this topic the big man himself stood up from under a car and looked their way, quirking one eyebrow in question as he paced their way.

Before Dom could reach where they stood, Vince just slightly behind the girl he was figuring he was going to have to protect, and damn he hated chivalry more than anything, Jesse darted around them all before throwing his arms around Tempest's waist and hoisting her into the air. He swung her around and she laughed giddily before he set her down.

"Damn J, you were supposed to be waitin' on me at the house. You didn't give me directions to this place and you left the grump to wait on me. You're lucky he didn't scare me off," she told her cousin with a thumb gesture over her shoulder at Vince.

Jesse laughed, both at his cousin's words and the look on Vince's face. "Sorry, but we got busy down here and I didn't figure on you making it much before six."

"She drives crazier than you do," Vince filled in, in a mumble.

"I thought the rex threw an apex seal in the rear and you were gonna have to drive the Altima. How'd you make it so fast?"

"Took my new ride," she replied with what could only be described as a shit eating grin.

"You got a new car and didn't tell me?" Jesse asked in apparent shock.

"Umhum," she nodded to the affirmative to confirm her answer.

"Now I can't wait to get back to the house and see it!"

"Why wait? It's parked out back."

"Vince let you drive your own car?"

"He even rode with me. Is that strange?" Her head tipped to the right as she looked quizzically at Jesse. She knew it was and was merely rubbing it in for fun. She could already tell Vince lived life by his own rules and females getting to drive were against several of them.

"No shit!" Jesse took off out the door. "No shit!" He could be heard through the door he called the second expletive so loudly. "Guys get out here and see this."

They all filed out the door. She elected to bring up the rear, seeing as she already knew quite well what they were seeing. The team, as Vince called them, were all clustered around the car in a gaggle of slack jaws.

"Where'd you get that?" Dom asked in a rumble.

The look in his black eyes was unreadable. She wasn't sure if it was a good thing he was asking or a bad thing. She shrugged. "I got it outta Japan."

"Smart ass," Vince growled in her ear. She looked over her shoulder at him. How had he gotten there without her knowing? "He doesn't like sass."

She shrugged again.

"I meant where'd you get it in this country," Dom restated his question, not without showing some of his displeasure at the necessity of it.

"I'm not from here. I'm Canadian, not American and it's not illegal where I'm from."

"It isn't illegal here either. It just woulda cost a shit load." Leon broke into the conversation. "But if they aren't illegal and are cheap enough for you to get your hands on one where you're from, why didn't you spring for a newer one than an '89?"

"It's a '90 and they're only legal in Canada if they're old when you go to import them. A '90 was the newest one I was allowed to import. I guess, had I went to Japan and picked it out, I coulda got a brand new one and stripped it for parts, shipped it back as used parts in a container and put it back together but," she lifted one shoulder, "seemed too much like work. I just wanted the car here and me behind the wheel. It was hard enough to find a v-spec that old that had really low kilometres."

"How much did it set you back?" Leon wasn't ready to let it go just yet.

"The car, shipping and getting it from the west coast to the east cost the better part of fifteen thousand, my dollars. So about twelve or thirteen thousand American."

"What have you done to it so far?" Jesse asked as he opened the door and popped the hood.

"You're gonna be disappointed Jess. The body kit and paint is the only custom feature about the thing so far. I just got it like a month before I headed down here and the paint guy had it the whole time."

"You painted it first?" Jesse was clearly scandalized.

"I already heard about it from the grouch, could we not go into it again?" she asked, exasperated.

"Hey!" Vince finally got fed up at being called names.

"So you're the cousin we've heard so much about." Though Letty phrased it as a question, it was clearly a rhetorical one. It was also clear Letty had yet to make up her mind about the new girl.

"I'm her," she answered anyway.

"You know Jesse never even told us your name."

"So he," she pointed at Vince, "tells me. Why is that Jess?"

"Didn't think they'd believe me," he grumbled.

"Why's that?" Dom asked.

"'Cause her name's Tempest," Vince supplied.

"Really?" Leon asked.

"Yeah, really. Yeah, my mother was a hippy. I'll answer to T or Temp. It's likely easier."

"So, cuz, how much am I allowed to do to this car while it's here?" Jesse asked after walking over to Tempest and throwing an arm around her shoulders.

"As much as you can afford cuz, I don't got a lot of money. That thing ain't exactly good on gas and I still gotta get home in two weeks. I got sponsors for a lot of it up home but I haven't decided just what I wanna do with it yet."

"If it was built already you could clean up at races."

"I didn't come down here to race. I came down here to hang out with you and I don't need a tricked out car to do that."

"But we hang at races a lot. Like every night, almost." Jesse imparted as he led his cousin back inside the garage. Leon shut the hood of the Skyline and they all followed the pair back into DT.

"That much?"

"Yeah, it's a big deal around here. Dom's a big deal."

Dom ruffled Jesse's hair before taking him in a playful headlock. "Only 'cause of you Jess."

"Yeah, our mad scientist right here!" Leon added, getting in on picking on Jesse.

"Mad scientist?" Tempest questioned.

"Yeah, 'cause of some of the frankincars he's built that work the bomb." Leon answered. He held out his hand. "I guess I should properly introduce myself. I'm Leon."

She shook his hand. "Nice to finally have a face to put with the name. Jesse talks about you guys all the time."

Leon continued. "That is Dominic, that's Letty, you seem to know Vince pretty good, and you're related to Jesse, so that's all of us."

"I'm Tempest and that's all of me," she sassed back cheekily.

"It's enough," Vince growled, commenting on her mouthy attitude more than anything.

"Too much for you I'd bet, more'n enough," she turned to look at Vince and cocked a brow, waiting for his answer. She was willing to bet he wouldn't disappoint.

"You know where my room is babe, you're welcome to come get schooled any time you want." He fingered one of her dark curls.

'Bout what she figured would leave his mouth in reply to her accusation. "Don't hold your breath waitin' on that one, Slick. You'll turn as blue as your car."

"Scared you couldn't handle a real man, I understand."

"Scared of what a woman like me would do to a man like you, more like. Sounds like you're used to women who let you lead and pretend they like everything you do. You couldn't handle a real woman like me. You," she coughed into her hand before continuing, "stepped outta line with me you'd damn sure hear about it. And do it over again until you got it right." She smirked.

"Like I said, you know where to find me. I'll accept your challenge any night you wanna," he raised a brow in an imitation of her, 'throw down."

The rest of the team watched this exchange, bemusement on all their faces. No one could remember the last time someone who wasn't on the team proper stood up to Vince.

"Maybe I'll take you up on that someday, just to show you how outta your league I am."

Vince growled. "I wouldn't want you noways. Likely couldn't shut your mouth long enough to find a good use for it."

"Not that you'll ever find out how wrong you are," one corner of her mouth raised sardonically as she taunted him. "I got higher standards. I like men who shower and know what end of a razor is the business end."

Before Vince could retort, something he was clearly itching to do, Dom broke in. "Enough. Shit, it's like havin' a couple'a potty mouthed kids around the joint. Both of you, shut up."

"Ok, ok. And if he don't shut his mouth I'll shut it for him."

"That I'd like to see," Vince growled.

"Let's take it outside and I'll show you how you'd look less a few'a your teeth."

"I don't hold with hittin' girls, but for one with such a huge set'a balls I might make an exception." Vince took a few steps closer to Tempest.

"Yeah, I just don't keep my balls in my girlfriend's purse, unlike you. And if you can get close enough to me to hit me I'll admit I deserve what I get."

Vince floundered after being told he kept his balls in a woman's purse. "Fuck you!" It was the best he could do. Leon laughed while Jesse and even Letty chuckled.

"Did I not just say enough?" Dom roared.

"Seems he's deaf _and _dumb," Tempest retorted, nodding her head toward Vince.

"Bitch!" Vince growled.

"Both of you, outta here until you can keep your mouths shut!" Dom roared and pointed at the door. They were giving him a splitting headache.

"A'ight I'm outta here. Jesse, you got my number, call me later, we'll hook up and you can show me where to find trouble 'round here, k?"

"Sure cuz, I'll walk you to your car." Grabbing her elbow, Jesse led his cousin out of the shop. "You gotta take it down a notch with Dom Cuz. He's use to running the show. Getting mouthed off to isn't gonna make him like you."

"I don't know how to be any other way Jesse. Sorry for making trouble with your friends, but if someone gets in my face I'm not the best at letting it go."

"I know that. I've heard about it a hundred times from mom when she gets letters from your mom. I know how much shit you get into at home. But this isn't home. This is L.A."

"Just a bigger place full of trouble, Jess. But it'll be alright. I'll try to slow my roll around Dom, but I can't make any promises if scruffy keeps pushin' my buttons."

"That's just Vince. You'll grow accustomed."

"We'll see. I'm gonna head for a rip around the area. Call me when you're done here and we'll hook up." On an afterthought Tempest turned back to Jesse. "You got a cell number?"

"Yeah, why?"

"So I can call ya if I get lost again."

Jesse relayed the number and she programmed it into her phone. She slid into the car and turned it on, sliding it into reverse and starting to throttle up to leave the parking lot. Before the car could do much more than growl a bit in preparation for squealing out of the parking spot, the passenger side door opened up and someone got in.

Flicking her sunglasses into her hair with a sigh, Tempest turned to see who had invaded her space and was slowing her escape. Blue eyes, unkempt facial hair, and a shaggy hairdo met her eyes. "You."

"I came with you, I got no ride."

"You couldn't hang out here until one of your friends left for home?"

"I could, but you're leaving now."

"Who says I'm going back by your place?"

"Like you know where you're goin'."

He was right. That made it even worse. She sure as hell wasn't going to concede to his point. It wasn't fair for him to be right! With a snap her left foot passed her right as the clutch came up and the gas went down. She cut the wheel hard and the car shot out of the parking spot. With an irate motion the shifter went from reverse to first. After executing a very nice burnout in the parking lot, the car left the lot, fishtailing out around the building and off down the street. She hit the on button of her CD player. The sound of Eve 6 filled the car, 'The Open Road Song' blasting out.

Her taste in music surprised him a bit. Rock wasn't really how he had her pegged. He would have expected a lot of rap and hip hop. He had to revise that opinion when the next song to play was 'My Way' by Limp Bizkit. Her driving would have scared pretty much anyone else on earth, he had to guess. He also would have bet money that she was doing it on purpose to freak him out. It wasn't going to work. While it was pretty obvious she wasn't scared of much behind the wheel, she had met her match in him. Neither was he. Though, he really would have preferred to have the wheel in his own hands. She hadn't headed back to his house. He wasn't sure if she knew where she was going somehow or not, but he'd bet not.

"Where's good to hang out at around here?"

"In the middle of the afternoon? Not very many places. Hang out how?"

"Beach, mall, strip to cruise, that kinda thing."

"We ain't goin' to the beach. I ain't goin' to the mall. We could cruise the strip but there won't be anyone around at this hour. Why don't we go home and chill until races?"

"How'm I supposed to chill around you?"

"I'm glad to know I got you all wound up."

"What's got me all wound up is the fact I ain't allowed to kill you. Dom seemed like he'd miss your ass. God knows why."

"You always this prickly?"

"Yeah, you always this arrogant?"

"Pretty much."

With a shared look they each busted up laughing. She couldn't remember the last guy who had kept her so on her toes about what she could and couldn't say. "Ok, come on. There must be a beach road we could cruise down. I've never seen the pacific before."

"Alright already. Anything to shut you up."

"Well, I'm the one going to a popular hangout with a guy who looks like death warmed over in my ride. How'm I supposed to pick up someone worth my while with you around?"

"Is there any answer that won't have you rippin' me a new one?"

"Not likely, but you can always try your best."

"Do you have friends where you're from?"

"Yeah, lots. Why?"

"I'm just curious who could put up with your ass for more'n ten minutes."

"There's people. Not many, but they do exist. I mean, you have friends. There's hope for anyone!"

He growled, "I have redeeming qualities. Somethin' you can't say."

"I can too! I can drink pretty much anybody under the table, I drive real good, I'm not bad to have at your back in a fight and I dance pretty good too. Not to mention I'm good with a wrench and know which is the business end of a ratchet. Those are all endearing traits."

"You can't drink me under the table." Vince shook his head to illustrate how absurd he found the idea.

"When will you give me a chance to meet that challenge, hot shot?"

"I'll extend the same offer to you on that one as I did on your other challenge. Any time, any place."

"So you'll let me school you on how I'm too much woman for you in bed and behind a booze bottle anywhere I want, any time I want?"

Something in her tone didn't bode well for him, but he wasn't about to start backing down from her verbal barbs now. "That's what I said."

"What if I wanna go to a bar tonight and school you on both of them in the same place?" A suggestive brow rose skyward to illustrate the question.

"I'm game if you are."

He was supposed to get embarrassed, not accept her challenge! "We'll see what tonight brings then." With a glance out the windows, Tempest realized she was well and truly lost. "Where the fuck are we?"

"Take a left here if you wanna drive down to the beach."

She did as she was told, for once, and they ended up on a four lane highway driving past the water. They reached a more populated area and started to cruise by seaside restaurants and dance clubs. There were girls in bikinis everywhere, and deeply tanned men in nothing but low slung board shorts almost as plentiful as the girls. Both occupants of the car were craning their necks to see every which way, granted both were looking at different things.

"You wanna stop for a bite to eat? This is a good place," Vince said as he pointed off the side of the road to an open air restaurant proclaimed Neptune's Net on the sign out front.

"I guess I could eat," Tempest answered as she turned on her blinker and pulled into the parking lot, almost running down a deeply tanned blonde in a barely there bikini. "Stupid bimbo," she growled under her breath as the girl jumped out of the way.

"If you killed her you'd be doing an injustice to society."

"You would think so. A girl that dumb is the only kind who'd have your ass."

"Well, there's lots of guys around here dumb enough to have you too. Until you open your mouth that is."

"Oh honey, when I open my mouth is the last time most guys decide not to like me," she winked sassily to rub in what she was hinting at before climbing out of her car and closing the door, leaving Vince inside trying to get his bearings.

One second he'd swear she hated his guts. The next she was making suggestive comments to him. Comments he knew there was only way she could intend for him to take. What was up? Was she dogging him or flirting with him? She ran hot and cold worse than a broken tap. He got out of the car with a shake of his head.

They ordered and ate, each checking out their respective opposite sex as the 'beautiful people' paraded past.

"I could get used to this," she mused out loud as a group of very deeply tanned, hard bodied guys walked past, nothing but board shorts hanging off their hips on their lean bodies. One of the guys looked at her and smiled. She returned his greeting readily, nodding her head back as she smiled.

The guy happened to glance at Vince. Seeing who the over clothed girl was sitting with put an end to any flirtation which the young man had been planning. Any girl out with a guy who looked that mean was off limits.

When the blonde surfer's attention waned in a split second, Tempest shot a look at her companion. "You gave him a dirty look! Why?"

"I don't know what you're talkin' about."

"Yeah you do. You gave him a nasty look for checkin' me out! We ain't here together; you don't have the right to scare off hot guys when they check me out."

"You had the right to run over the blonde in the red bikini!"

"She got in my way!"

"God!" He threw his hands in the air with a roar. He couldn't win. "You sure you have friends? You haven't talked them all into suicide?"

"When someone's my friend they're safe from having my sarcasm turned on them."

"Well if that ain't enough to make me want to be your friend nothin' is. I don't know how much'a your damn mouthy personality I can take."

"I told you that you weren't man enough to handle me, thanks for confirming it."

"Come on over here and I'll show you man enough," he mumbled.

She still heard him. "I thought we had the whole 'whose balls are bigger' contest set for tonight in a bar of your choice."

"Oh yeah. I really can't wait to drink you into oblivion."

"Just don't hold your breath while you're waitin', a'ight?"

"Whatever. Let's go back to the garage and see if you can't keep your damn mouth shut long enough for Dom not to kick us outta the place."

With a shrug she agreed and they drove back the way they had come. When they walked in Dom was no where to be seen. Leon was attempting to get the drums off the rear brake system of a blue Acura. He looked up from his work when they walked in. "V, here. These damn things are stuck on. You come see if you can beat them off."

"Is beating off for men something you do often?" Tempest asked Vince under her breath. He was still right beside her and heard every word.

He didn't even bother retorting; knowing anything he said would just be used against him in the new fight that would break out. Instead, with a shake of his head as he attempted to control his temper, he crossed to Leon's bay and took the hammer from his friend. He figured he could prove his manliness by accomplishing the task. He swung at the stuck drum. His blow landed with a crash. The drum stayed put. He gave it a few more blows but it didn't budge.

"Oh for crying out loud," Tempest said as she walked up beside the car. "Put down your purse sweetheart, and really give it one."

"I'd like to see you get it off!"

"By that I assume you mean the brake drum right?"

"Yeah, I mean the brake drum. What else could I mean?"

She smirked and quirked a brow at him. "I'll leave you to ponder the answer to that while I get these brakes apart for you, a'ight?" She didn't wait for him to answer, just took the hammer. She turned to Leon. "I need a pry bar too, a big one." Leon gave her the bar and she got to work. Rather than beat on the drum, which was already as loose as it was going to get from that kind of manipulation, she wedged the bar between the lip of the drum and the backing plate. Then, she tapped on the back edge of the drum with the hammer on one side as she pried out on the other. It slowly slid down the wheel studs before she put the tools down and pulled it the rest of the way off. "Tada," she said as she handed it to Leon. She turned to Vince. "See, that's why I never started to carry a purse. Just gets in the way."

"How late does it have to get before I can start getting you drunk?" Vince growled.

"It's always late enough to get drunk in my world," she answered. "I don't know how you feel on early evening drinking, however."

"If you're drinkin' booze you ain't mouthin' off. That has to be a plus."

"We got races tonight. No one gets drunk until afterward," Dom used his statement to alert the group to his arrival.

"Sounds like you have a hot date tonight with your boyfriend, sweetness," Tempest teased Vince, trying to keep her voice low so Dominic wouldn't hear. "Guess I'll just have to take a rain check."

"You ain't gettin' outta anything that easy, Mouth."

"You two still at it?" Dom asked in exasperation.

"He thinks we'll get at it later. I'm not sure if he's right or not yet." She pointed at Vince. When Tempest caught the irate look on Dom's face she wished she could take back her words. But she was too used to saying whatever came into her mind to change now. She shook her head. "So, races huh?" she asked as she rubbed the back of her neck to hide her discomfort.

"Yeah, they start at eleven. I guess you can come. If you want."

"My car isn't ready to go to races yet."

"I know that. You can ride with Jesse, if you come."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Dom nodded before walking into his office.

"Wow, you didn't get us kicked out. I'm impressed."

"It was pure luck, Pal. I didn't manage it on purpose."

He shrugged. "You goin' to races with us tonight or not?"

"Dunno. Should I?"

"If you wanna keep Dom happy and make Jesse happy too than yeah. If you don't care about any of that than do what you want."

"Jesse I care about. I guess I'll go. I just wish I could justify taking my own car down."

"Can't take a car you couldn't race and win with to street races."

"I know that," Tempest said as she rolled her eyes. "Doesn't make me wish it any less."

"Ride with Jesse. It's the kid you came down here to see."

"I know that too. Can you state anything that ain't the obvious or what?"

"I'm just sayin'. Ride to races with your cousin. We'll have our little contest after, back at the house."

"We'll see how it goes." A moment after she made her statement her phone rang. "Hello?"

"Where the hell are you?" Jesse asked.

"The garage. Where are you?"

"Combing the neighbourhood for Vince's body in a ditch."

"Naw, he's still alive. For now." She looked at Vince. The way he looked back made it obvious he knew she was talking about him and he didn't like it. "I just got invited to races tonight in such a way that it was pretty obvious I got ordered to go to races tonight."

"Sweet! I was hoping he'd ask you. You can take the Skyline down."

"No I can't. I can't take a car that I can't race in if I'm challenged."

"I never thought of that. Well, you'll just have to ride with me."

"That's the plan."

"I'll meet you at the house in a few."

"Um Jess?"

"Yeah?"

"I don't remember where the house is from here."

"I'll swing by the shop first so you can follow me home then."

"Sweet. I'll meet you in the parking lot in a few."

They both hung up. With a wave at Leon, Tempest went to wait with her car. She carefully clambered up onto the hood and reclined on the windshield. Her eyes drifted closed behind her sunglasses and she let the sun lull her into a state of relaxation. _I could get very use to this_.

"You're gonna end up lookin' like a leather handbag by the time you're forty if you hang out in the sun without sunblock."

"Why do you turn up everywhere I go?" She opened one eye in a squint after sliding her shades up onto her forehead.

"I got shit to do before tonight. Either you or the kid can run me home."

"I see. And if I say I don't want your overgrown ass in my car again today?"

He shrugged. "Jess won't say that."

"Yeah, for all his car skills poor Jess just ain't all that bright."

The smirk on her fact let him know the insult wasn't intended for Jesse, but rather for himself. He leaned down and got in her face. "And you think you are?"

"Bright?"

"Yeah."

"I know I'm smart. I've seen my transcripts."

"There's more to smart than bein' good in school."

"Well, you're the one who says I run my mouth way too much, right?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Well, I'm still alive an' kickin' so I must be fairly street smart too."

"We'll see."

"Yeah, you'll see. Now get outta my face before I bite your nose off."

"I can think of other things you can use your mouth for."

"Only if I'm allowed to use my teeth then, too."

"Harsh."

"It's a harsh world." She wet her bottom lip with her tongue and watched his eyes follow the movement before his pupils dilated.

Before he could retort to her comment a car horn honked behind him directly and he jumped in shock. "Fuck!" He moved and it allowed them to see Jesse sitting in the Jetta with a grin on his face. He knew how badly he'd startled Vince.

"You gonna ride with Jesse, or me?"

"You, get in the car."

"Did we ever have a conversation on how much bossy I'll be willin' to take before I kick your ass?"

"No, but I'm not too scared of you kickin' my ass."

"Get in the fuckin' car."

He went with a chuckle. She walked over to Jesse's window after getting off her hood gingerly. "I wouldn't have dragged you down here if I'd known Prince Surly was gonna bum a ride home."

"Don't worry about it. I've never seen anyone give Vince back as good as they get. It's pretty funny."

"Vince has been allowed to live like a wild thing for far too long. How fuckin' old is this boy?"

"Twenty two."

"Shit, really?"

Jesse nodded to the affirmative with a grin.

"Fool's really three years older than I am?"

"'Fraid so."

"Damn! Boys really do grow up a lot slower than girls."

Jesse went to respond, but before he could the peel of the Skyline's horn rent the air. He laughed. "You better take Prince Surly," he paused to snort, "home before he blows a gasket."

"You knew this would happen!" Tempest accused, waving a finger in Jesse's face.

"Knew what would happen?"

"That he would torture me, that I would respond in kind. You were hoping it would add amusement to your life for the next few weeks."

"I was kinda hopin' you'd hook up with Leon and decide to move down here, actually."

She sighed. "We been over this a hundred times Jesse. It would be a huge bureaucratic headache for me to immigrate to the USA."

"But it could be done."

"Yeah, if I had a job lined up, and the desire to break the heart of my mother, grandmother and assorted aunts, uncles and cousins."

"You'd go back to visit."

"Jesse," she sighed. The debate was an old and tired one.

They had only known each other first hand until they were six. That was when Jesse's mother had moved to Nevada because her husband, Jesse's father, had accepted a job there. Their relationship after that point had been all phone, letters and internet. But until he was dragged kicking and screaming out of her life, they'd been inseparable. He was only two months older than she, so they literally had grown up together. He and his mother had always just lived down the street. He and his mother had been up to visit once, but it had been years ago, the summer they were both twelve. Ever since, he had been after her to chase the 'American dream' into California with him. Despite the fact that his dad had ended up in prison down there, and his mother had remarried, and he'd hated his step father so much that he'd run off to California the second he'd turned 16.

"You know you could get a better job down here than you'll ever have on that backwards island you still call home."

"I'll think about looking into it, ok?"

"Yes!"

Her answer had obviously been taken as 'this will happen' not 'I will check into this to assess the feasibility.' "The Skyline ain't even legal down here. What about that?"

"Leave it registered in your mom's name in Canada. Then you can just say she's down visiting and you're driving it."

"You got an answer for everything, don't you?"

"I'm related to you. Of course I do."

Before she could think of a suitable reply the horn of her car blasted again. She turned to look in the direction of her darkened vehicle. "Shit, I'm comin' already!" she yelled in the general direction. She turned back to Jesse. "What i_is/i_ his damage?"

"We think he might have been dropped on his head as an infant."

"I think his mama popped her tittie out his mouth too early. He clearly shoulda been breast fed until his late teens in the hope he grew up a bit."

Jesse had to lay his head on the steering wheel of the Jetta he was laughing so hard. "Don't let him hear you say things like that."

"Things like what?" a deceptively calm voice drawled from behind Tempest.

"Like he's a big, dumb, impatient Neanderthal who needs to wait his ass in the damn car," she growled back without turning around.

"Its a million degrees in the damn car and you didn't give me the damn keys so I can't even crack a fuckin' window!"

"Jesse, I'll see you at home in a few, a'ight?"

"See you there cuz."

She pushed past Vince and strode to her car, her hips swishing in her agitation. i_Always pushin' my damn buttons/i. _She waited long enough for Vince to have the door closed before she squealed out of the parking spot.

"So, what did you say about me to Jesse that had him giving you that warning?" he asked. His tone was again a study in barely controlled anger.

"Nonaya."

"Nonaya?"

"Yeah, as in none'a ya damn business." She punctuated her statement with a violent shift from second to third, tailgating the Jetta for something to do.

"I wanna know what you said!"

"And I don't wanna tell you!" she roared. "If your only intent in ridin' with me was to bust my balls you shoulda went with Jess."

"Fuck, you're hard on the head."

"What can I say? I try." She shrugged.

"You must try hard."

"Nope, it just comes natural."

"God help us all."

"You can call to God all you want but I can tell you from experience he ain't comin' so it just gives you somethin' to do while you wait. Kinda like the button you push at the crosswalk when you're waiting to get the light. It don't make the green come any faster, just keeps you occupied while you stand there."

"Cynical."

She made a gesture uncannily like one Jesse was known for, cocking her head slightly to the left as she raised her left shoulder and squinted her left eye slightly. She even lifted her left hand, palm up. The only thing she was missing was a lit smoke between her fingers. The family resemblance was finally apparent. "Maybe, but it ain't like life hasn't given me good reason."

He simply shrugged in answer. Cynical was ok. Cynical he got. The constant smart aleck retorts he wasn't so sure he did. Why did she constantly feel the need to respond with lip? "You goin' to races tonight or not?"

"Like as not I'll go. Don't really wanna be left alone in a strange house all night."

"Good a reason as any to come with, I suppose."

They reached the house. Jesse parked in the driveway but Tempest chose to park at the curb again. She got out of the car, waited for Vince to shut his door and locked the car up before arming the security. They walked into the house to find everyone else aside from Leon already sitting in the living room.


	2. Of Workboots and Unlikely Saviours

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By - _TempestRaces_

Chapter 2 – **Of Workboots and Unlikely Saviours**

"I guess you didn't meet Mia yet," Jesse said as he pointed at the girl in question, once they were standing in the door of the living room.

Mia stood up and crossed to the door. "Hi! I'm Mia and you must be Jesse's cousin."

"Yeah," she held out her hand. "Tempest." _She sure is a bucket of sunshine_, she mused about Mia.

"Nice to meet you." If Mia had anything to think about the unique name, she kept it to herself. "Jesse has told us a lot about you!"

"Most of it bad, I assume." She grinned. Jesse wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

"Just the truth cuz, nothin' more."

"That's not necessarily a good thing Jess."

"He didn't have a single bad thing to say, other than trouble seems to find you slightly more than it does other people." Mia smiled.

"He got that right, so I guess I can't complain."

"Understatement of the fuckin' century."

Mia shot Vince a dirty look for his statement.

"Sorry. How you doin' Mia?"

"Fine."

Tempest looked from one to the other. There were some not so subtle undercurrents there. _So, Prince Surly just gets play where he can because the real object of his affections ain't havin' none of it. _She watched Vince stomp off before turning her gaze back on Mia, who rolled her eyes with a long suffering smile.

"I'm Dom's sister, by the way. Letty's his girl, in case no one explained us yet."

"Just the bare essentials."

"I hear you're coming down to races with Jesse tonight."

"That's my plan. I just wish I had my car ready to go."

"Well, if we just put the spray in it, and maybe a cold air intake, and a chip, and bigger turbos—"

Tempest cut in. "Jesse! I don't have cash for any of that stuff." She thought a moment. "Well, maybe to get a direct port kit and some spray, but not for all that stuff. 'Sides, the car really should have cams, valve springs, rings, and a pulley kit and coil overs and strut braces, and struts and an exhaust, and a clutch and flywheel, and be chipped and programmed and dynoed. Not to mention it will get bigger turbos but it will also need a huge and expensive front mounted intercooler and frame mods to allow for it. And if I ever wanna get it stopped after I get it going that fast, it needs bigger and better brakes. We don't have time or money for all that stuff." She grimaced as Jesse's face fell. "When I get home and get sponsors I promise I'll phone you the second I confirm who I got and let you tell me what to get, ok? I had some interest from HKS and TEIN so I just have to confirm if the interest is still there."

"Promise?"

"I solemnly swear that you will be as involved in building my car as possible from over three thousand miles away."

"Sweet!"

Tempest smiled up at her cousin. It was really endearing how little it took to make him happy. Mia asked about how they had come to live in different countries and stay so close so Tempest told the story. By the time she was done and they ate supper it was time to get ready for the night.

Everyone headed for their respective rooms to get ready. Having never been to a true organized street race, Tempest had no idea what to expect. They did things differently where she was from. They didn't meet up at a certain time in a certain place. They just sort of found each other across the city and surrounding area and raced where and when they could. There was no set time. After dark was pretty much the only guideline. So she just changed into what she would wear for any other night of driving around in a car. She ended up in a brick red wifebeater and a pair of pale cream cargo pants. She slid her feet into her boots and considered herself ready.

Until she got to the living room where Mia, Letty, and the rest of the team less Vince were waiting. She took in the outfits on Mia and Letty with some trepidation. They were way more dressed up than she was, but in a heck of a lot less actual clothing. "So, when do we leave?"

"After you get dressed for races!" Mia said in reproach as she stood up. "You can't go like that."

"Why not?" Tempest looked down at herself.

"Because that's not dressed up enough."

"I'm going to watch car races, correct?"

"Yes, but girls wear—"

"A lot less clothes than that, Mouth," Vince broke in from the door.

"I ain't goin' to impress anyone. I'm just going to watch some cars race."

"You're going to feel way out of place if you wear that," Mia cautioned.

"I didn't bring anything all that much dressier than what I've already got on."

"Are those steel toed boots?" Mia asked in horror, looking at the girl's feet.

"Yeah. My boots are all I ever wear. They've come in quite handy for getting me out of the trouble I get myself into in the past. Funny how a kick has so much more authority when it comes with a steel chaser."

"You won't need that kind of help at races and you can't go in shop clothes and work boots," Mia tsked. "You're about my size so my stuff and Letty's will fit you. Let's go find you something more suitable to wear."

Despite the look she shot Jesse, which clearly screamed 'rescue me' she still found herself in Mia's room, stripped to her underwear, vetoing outfit after outfit.

"It's too sheer," Tempest said, complaining about the slightly transparent red top Mia had made her put on. She was very grateful for the red bra she had already been wearing.

"It's fine. Now put this on."

"Mia, this is a skirt."

"Yes it is! Good for you. Put it on."

"I don't do skirts."

"You don't have horribly deformed legs, and they aren't hairy. Why wouldn't you want to show them off?"

"Because you can't get out of a car in a skirt without showing all and sundry your business."

"If Letty can manage so can you. Put it on."

Seeing Mia wasn't taking no for an answer she put on the leather skirt. It felt to a point not quite half way down her thighs and was pleated like a slightly more naughty take on the traditional school girl skirt. The length of the top she had been given combined with the cropped top felt like it left almost a foot of her stomach on display. "This isn't enough clothes. I'm from Canada. It goes to minus twenty and thirty there for like four months out of every year. I don't have enough tan to pull this off." She tried to tug the top lower and the skirt higher up her body than the spot on her hips where it now sat.

Mia gave her a withering look before straightening the hem of her shirt and settling the skirt right back where it had come from. "It looks good. But now you need footwear."

"My boots stay."

"No they don't. Not with a skirt. Be serious."

"That is serious."

"You can wear boots, but not those," Mia said with her nose crinkled in disgust as she looked at the discarded Caterpillar work boots on her floor. She went to her closet and came back with a pair of knee high, high heeled leather boots. "You don't have to drive so you can wear these."

"I'll fall flat on my ass."

"You can't tell me you don't own a pair of boots like these."

"Ok, I can't. I call them my hooker heels but they only come out to play on special occasions."

"Such as this."

With a sigh of defeat, Tempest pulled the boots on and zipped them up. She felt almost dizzy from her new height, which she figured had to be pushing five eleven. Mia led her back downstairs, happy as a pig in shit.

Tempest, she was anything but happy. She braced herself for the comments to begin. She was disappointed. No one said anything. Seemed her new look really was just status quo for girls at their races. That saddened her. She would a hundred times rather be happy in her cargos than uncomfortable and on display to make some oversexed men get their jollies off ogling her. But she was the guest, so she went along with it, against her better judgement.

She carefully slid into the passenger seat of the Jetta and did up her belt. She was glad to find out on the way that Jesse also would have rathered she kept on her own clothes. He didn't want to see quite as much of his cousin as he currently was.

When they got out of the car at the meeting place, she watched as all the guys were immediately circled by girls wearing even less than she was, and not afraid to flaunt what was barely covered either. She watched as Letty threatened to beat some heads together as girls hung off Dominic. They quickly dispersed after the Latina's threat. She watched as Vince, Leon, and even Jesse were surrounded by the same kind of girl. She snorted and turned her back on the scene. What a joke. So much for car racing. The main thing being bet and won around the scene this night was sex, and it was obvious.

As if to illustrate her point three guys of various race walked up to her and started talking at her. Not to her, because that would imply some interest in what she had to contribute to the conversation and they had none. They just wanted to try and wow her into choosing to hang off their arm for the night and into the morning as well, if she didn't miss her guess. She hoped her—what had to be obviously bored—look would turn them off, but it was like they just took it to mean she was an airhead and got even more impressed with her.

"So I just installed NOS in my whip," the middle guy said smugly.

It was obvious he expected her answer to be along one of two lines. 'Wow!' or, 'like, what's NOS?' and he was about to be disappointed. "Really?"

"Yeah baby." He nodded smugly.

She was at the end of her tether. "One, I ain't your baby and I sure as fuck never will be. I don't date posers. Two, you didn't just install NOS in your whip. You installed a nitrous system into your car. I don't care if you bought a NOS kit or some other kind, it's still not NOS it's fuckin' nitrous. Learn your terminology before you step to a person who's both a tuner and a technician and try to look like a big, smart racer man, a'ight?"

"What turned you into such a bitch?" the first guy sneered.

"Oh no you didn't," Tempest muttered.

"Didn't what?"

"Sign your own death certificate." On that note, she decided the time was as good as any to throw the first punch. She got lucky and got the second guy who'd talked the most game right in the bridge of his nose with the flat edge of her hand. The direct hit to the 'sweet spot' dropped him like a stone. The crowd went wild, which drew the attention of the rest of the team, who had basically forgotten she was there and new to the whole scene.

The first guy came at her, clearly not caring if she was a girl or not once he'd seen her drop his friend. Before he could reach her, something big and broad blocked her view of his advance. She groaned. The cavalry had arrived. And there she was, still needing the physical release of kicking the snot out of someone.

"You sure you wanna go there?" The question was an angry growl.

Tempest looked up in shock. It wasn't Jesse who had decided to play her saviour, but Vince. She looked at his back quizzically. She would have figured him for the first one to want to see her get her ass schooled after the day they had.

"Shit, sorry Vince. Didn't know she was with you."

"Now you do," he snarled.

_Clearly doesn't care he's lying_. She leaned around Vince and watched the two guys still standing pick up their third friend between them and carry him off, muttering about 'broads with too much attitude' under their breath as they went.

"You ok?" Vince asked.

"Fine. I was taking care of things. I didn't need any help."

"It was three on one. You woulda."

"It was two on one. I knocked the first one out already by the time you got over here."

"You're gonna get yourself in serious shit, doing stuff like that down here."

"Stuff like what? Like refusing to let three guys talk to me like I'm some sorta bimbo because I'm a girl? I race better'n over three quarters of these people and I put in all my own wrench time, but I'm supposed to act like some airhead because all they want is to see shit blow up and find a piece of ass for the night, in that order."

"It's not like that where you're from?"

"Fuck no. And if I knew it was like that here I woulda stayed home."

"Well, it don't help you let Mia dress you up like she did, and you arrived in someone else's ride, not your own. Girls that arrive in the car of a guy and then don't hang all over that guy they came with are fair game."

"Not my choice. Not any of it. I'm just tryin' to play nice, play by your rules. But if they include letting a bunch of bucaiolo talk game at me and treat me like an easy slut than I'm out."

Vince shook his head slightly in puzzlement. "Where'd you learn Italian?"

"I know some people. Why?"

"I've never heard anyone interject the Italian word for asshole into conversation before."

"First time for everything."

"Listen, just stay with Mia and Letty and no one will think that you're available, ok? If they know you're with us, they won't start shit with you."

"Fine," she answered before she left the area, walking over to Jesse's side and stopping there with a huff.

"You were gonna fight three guys all by yourself?"

"Hell yeah. I'm kinda pissed I didn't get the chance."

"You would'a got the shit beat out of you."

"Doubtful. I'm pretty good with my hands."

"I can't wait to have you prove or disprove that statement to me."

The statement was growled into her ear, on the opposite side of Jesse, so he wouldn't hear. She looked up in shock. _How does he keep sneakin' up on me?_ "You again? You still think you're gonna get some play outta me?" she asked with her eyebrow cocked in disbelief.

"Sooner or later you ladies all bow to the inevitable."

"Sooner or later all the race hos you're use to bow to not picking up someone better. I'm not one of those hos."

He slapped a hand to his chest. "Bull's-eye. _Straight_ through the heart."

"Not my fault you never learned the distinction between trash, which is the kind of girl who'll have you, and class, which is me, and the kind of girl who won't."

"Sounds like someone's finally ready to admit who's too much for the other to handle."

"I admit nothin'. I just don't want to leave you a broken man. Once you had me you'd never be able to move on again. Never be able to go back to your 'skanks' as you guys call them, and I'm only here for two weeks." She turned to face him fully and wrapped her arms around his neck and forced a pout to turn her mouth down at the corners. "You're so young, have so much of your life ahead of you. I wouldn't want to ruin you for any other girl so early in your years." Still forcing her self to look sad and pouty she brushed a hand over his hair in mock tenderness.

He grabbed her hips and brought their bodies into full contact. "I think I'd be willing to risk it. Go ahead, break me."

His eyes flashed with teasing, or maybe something else she couldn't put her finger on. The way he kept rising to her challenges instead of backing off was infuriating. Normally when she made her outlandish challenges, those on the other end didn't take the bait. Normally she was able to make them realize backing down was the only option. Vince had to keep rising to the occasion.

_Oh well, he asked for it!_

_My god, he's hard everywhere, _she mused as she was pressed against his chest, thighs, and stomach._ Yep, _everywhere. _Not bad_. When she made _that_ realization her eyebrow rose skyward for what felt like the millionth time. She really had thought it was all a fun game. All teasing. _That_ wasn't teasing. But was his reaction really to her, or to the fact that she really did give off an impossible to attain, disdainful vibe? Was it her, or the chase which had him interested? With a minute, feline shrug she decided to test out the situation. Fisting both her hands in his shaggy hair she forced his face down the few inches needed and pressed her mouth to his.

Given the millisecond pause before he thought to respond to her overture, she figured that it was the feeling he would never have her that had been making him want her. But when his mouth engaged hers it didn't take long for his hands to leave her hips and find her ass.

_Typial_, she mused with a mental smirk.

"Now that's something I didn't see coming," Jesse said to Leon, giving him a poke in the ribs before pointing toward where Vince was still molesting his cousin.

"Damn dawg, are they really doing that in front of the entire place, like I think they are?"

"Yeah. That's my baby cousin Leon!"

"She looks all grown up from where I stand."

"Maybe, but I never did get to tell her that Vince is into Mia. Never thought it'd be an issue. What if she thinks there could be more between them than, well, what obviously comes next when two people practically crawl down each other's throats in front of about five thousand people?"

"Better school her on how it is the second we get back to the fort, by the look of that."

"I'm gonna do better than that. I'm gonna go break it up now."

Before Leon could veto his plan, Jesse headed toward the couple.

Vince might have been the biggest Neanderthal she'd ever met, attitude wise, and was confirming that opinion with the grip he still had on the cheeks of her ass, but he couldn't be faulted for how he kissed. At least, that was how she was justifying it to herself that she was allowing his man handling of her to go on for so long, in public no less. He released her mouth and licked her lower lip. Her head fell back, half in disappointment in herself for allowing things to go so far and half in a blood slowing reaction to what he was doing to her. The beginnings of the beard which was growing on his face tickled the side of her neck next, before his teeth not so gently scraped her skin. She fought a moan.

"Umhum," a throat was cleared beside them.

As ashamed as she was of the fact, she couldn't find it in herself to care, or look to see who it was. Vision would just complicate the world of sensory perception she found herself living in—and enjoying. Vince nipped the side of her neck particularly hard before licking the same place gently as if to sooth the hurt. She didn't react in time to make sure the gasp that came to her lips died there. It escaped breathily from her. Pure electricity slid from the small wound on her skin and skittered to many other places along her nerves.

"Um, guys?" Jesse tried again to break things up without being more overt. He watched as his friend pressed his lips to his cousin's mouth again, one hand leaving her ass to allow him to wrap his arm around her waist and bend her back in a bow over it with the force of his kiss. Her hands twined with more strength into the hair on the back of Vince's head. It was easy to see the world had ceased to exist beyond the feeling of him on her... _Point not taken_, he sighed.

"What the fuck is goin' on here?" Dom asked, voice low and irritated.

Jesse spun around to find Dom right behind him, and not looking too pleased.

Dom's voice was finally enough to break through the red haze of desire which had made him forget he was at races, in front of a huge crowd of people, including all his friends. But damn, he sure hadn't expected her to start kissing him like that. He allowed her to stand back up with a sigh, wishing they were anywhere but where they were. Maybe he shouldn't mess around with Jesse's cousin, but he didn't hear her complaining, and she sure was grown. He looked down into her face. She had removed her hands from his hair, letting go slowly, a grip he had barely realized that she had maintained, but she hadn't opened her eyes again yet. Vince spared a glance for Dominic. _He's seriously pissed_.

He happened to glance back at Tempest as her eyes flickered open. The black centers almost totally hid the light green colour. She looked just as dazed as he felt.

She licked her lower lip unconsciously, feeling the swelling his attentions with lips and teeth and tongue had brought. His gaze watched it intently and he hungered to see how much more swollen he could make her lower lip before it could get no fuller. She broke into his thoughts when she spoke. "So, do you feel broken and unable to continue with your life yet?"

"No, but you're still here, so it doesn't count yet," he chuckled.

"True. The truth of the experiment won't be known until I leave, I suppose."

"Guess not."

"Ok then," she trailed off, going out of her way not to look at Dominic.

"I think we might need to do more research later, just to be sure." He leaned back down toward her. When he was a mere breath away from kissing her again, Dom spoke.

"Do you intend to make an ass of yourselves all night, or can we go back to what we came here to do?" Dom growled.

Tempest allowed herself to look around the area. There were very few people around _not_ watching them. She fought blushing. She didn't blush. She had made out with guys in public before. Maybe not quite so thoroughly, and maybe in a crowed dance club while loaded, not in the street sober, but it wasn't a first.

"If I pick continuing to make a spectacle, what happens then?" She could only blame her discomfort with the situation for her response. Given what Jesse had told her about Dom, she knew better than to say things like that to him.

Vince wrapped an arm around her waist from behind. "Let it go," he growled into her ear.

"You can walk home," Dom said, fighting to keep himself from roaring. What went on in his house was one thing, but what went on in public in front of everyone was another. "Now."

"Ok, point made," Tempest conceded, though it was the last thing she wanted to do.

Dom walked away, shaking his head.

"Asshole," she muttered at his retreating back, scratching the bridge of her nose with her middle finger.

"What did I tell you about pushin' him, cuz?"

"Sorry," she sighed. "It wasn't intentional. I told you I'm use to sayin' whatever pops in my head." She cocked her head to the side. "Think he'll get over it?"

"Yeah, he'll deal," Vince answered before Jesse could, and used growling his answer directly into her ear as an excuse to nip at and suck on her earlobe.

Jesse rolled his eyes.

"Not if you don't lay off he won't, fool. Give it a break!" She broke the hold he had around her waist almost angrily. She found herself angry at her lack of control and her amount of response to something that had started out teasing. _Damn it, he wasn't supposed to be able to make me want him back._ "Come on Jess. Let's go for a walk."

"Ok," Jesse answered. It was just the opportunity he needed to talk to her about Vince. They walked away from where Leon and Vince were still standing, Jesse tossing an arm across her shoulders. "I just gotta warn you cuz, don't take this the wrong way, but Vince isn't looking for a commitment."

"He's into Mia, yes I know. I figured that out back at the house."

"So what are you playing at?" Jesse's tone showed the fact he clearly wasn't sure if he should be upset with what had happened, or angry with her.

"I was teasing him and it got out of hand. Don't sweat it Jesse. I know he's not the forever type. I know what I'm getting into, if I even decide to get into it."

"You haven't decided if you want to get into it, but you let him put his hands all over you? In a huge crowd no less?"

"I know. I got caught up in the moment. Not like you haven't."

"I guess not. I just don't want to see you fall for him and end up heart broken."

"Won't happen cuz. Eyes wide open on this one."

"Ok, now just stop pissin' Dom off and life is good."

She laughed. "I'm in shit there. Everything about me pisses Dom off. The noise I make when I breathe pisses Dom off. And I don't really care because Dom pisses me off. But I still just don't know if I know how to stop pissin' Dom off."

"Better find a way."

"I'll try to avoid him."

"If you can't stop back talkin' to him that might be for the best."

They headed back to where the rest of the team was standing. Tempest was very aware of the fact all eyes were on her now. It wasn't pleasant to feel like she was living under the microscope. It wasn't malicious, just a speculation, but she still didn't like it. Dom finally got challenged to a race, the event they had been waiting for to get the night really rolling, Jesse confided. She and Jesse decided to go to the finish line to see the end of the race. As Jesse went to pull the Jetta out of its spot, someone got in the back seat.

Something told her she knew who it was and she didn't even bother to look. Sure enough when Jesse parked the car at the end of the quarter mile strip and she got out of the passenger seat, Vince was getting out of the back seat from her same side of the car. Jesse pulled a Nextel off his belt. "Ok, we're here."

"But I can't see a damn thing," Tempest complained, gesturing at all the people in front of her with a wave of her arm. Vince walked in front of her. "Yeah, that makes it _all_ better."

He crouched down. "Get on. I'll lift you up so you can see."

"That's not necessary."

"Sure it is. It's your first race. You wanna see Dom win, don't you?"

"You're that sure it's gonna be Dom?"

"Of course it's gonna be Dom," Jesse answered.

With a shrug Tempest climbed onto Vince's offered back and allowed him to lock his arms under her and lift her up. She gained an extra few feet of height from her new position and she could see the road.

"It's on," Leon's voice came across the Nextel in Jesse's hand a moment later. Ten seconds after Leon called the start of the race, Dom's red car streaked over the finish line. He pulled a u-turn and headed back for the warehouse. They got into the Jetta and followed him back. They watched as Dom got handed his winnings and handed them to Mia to count before turning to Letty and kissing her.

"Party at our house!" Dom called, knowing those who were welcome would know who they were.


	3. Of Dares and Drunken Decisions

**AN: Ok, this is toned back from the original version and I hope it's toned down enough to pass for M. I suppose I'll soon know if not, because I have no doubt someone will report me as they have done or threatened to do in the past. I'm gonna say this now, even though I know it won't do a damn thing for me in the long run. K – you need to get that damn mind outta the gutter! ;)**

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Three – **Of Dares and Drunken Decisions**

When they arrived someone put the stereo on blast and some techno track began to emanate from several speakers all over the lower level at about a million decibels.

The first thing Tempest did on arriving back in the house was move to sneak up to Mia's room to retrieve her own, comfortable clothes.

"Going somewhere?"

She turned to look behind her, a guilty look on her face. Standing at the foot of the stairs was Mia. "The bathroom."

"You better come back in the same clothes you have on now or I _will_ find you and make you change into something you won't like half as much. Live a little, why don't you?"

"Fine," she huffed before stomping up the stairs and locking herself in the bathroom. She braced her hands on the sink edge and stared down the girl in the mirror. Who the hell was that person looking back? The mouthy sarcasm was just her, she couldn't help it. But the being willing to basically fuck a guy just because he was there and knew how to kiss well enough to curl her toes wasn't really her style. She wasn't a prude. She didn't believe in waiting on marriage or anything like that. But she didn't really just pick guys up for the night either. Yet, that was exactly what she was contemplating doing with Jesse's friend, of all people.

Surely an adult had the right to have a vacation fling if she was so inclined? But was she? She left the bathroom. She decided she could only make up her mind after several strong drinks. With a grin, she acknowledged the foolhardy nature of her decision. She always knew she over analyzed everything too much. Maybe she'd give flying by the seat of her pants a try. She walked into the living room and didn't see anyone she knew. Next stop was the kitchen, where she found Mia and Letty.

"Where's everyone else?"

"You mean where's V?" Letty asked with a sly grin.

"No, Jesse actually."

"The boys made a corner store liquor run, they'll be right back."

"Cool." She shook her head, exactly what Mia had just told her sinking in. "It takes four of them to go to the corner store?"

"It takes four of them to carry all the stuff in from the corner store," Mia elaborated.

"Shit."

The girls talked for a few more minutes before the back door banged open and Dom walked in, followed by Jesse, Leon, and finally Vince. They were all loaded with cases and bottles of liquor.

"I didn't think you got to the liquor store cuz so I bought you a quart of gin."

"Jesse, you are my favourite cousin. What'd you get me for mix?"

"Orange juice, lemon juice and grenadine."

"Gin and Sin, my two favourite things aside from my cousin!" She named her favourite drink.

Jesse laughed before kissing her cheek and offering his own for her return, which she pecked there immediately.

"I'ma guess you still drink beer? Mexican beer?" A look of supreme distaste twisted her mouth and crinkled her nose.

"You can have any brew you want, long as it's a Corona," Dom answered for Jesse.

Tempest made a gagging noise. "You will never catch me drinking any beer. Not Corona, not any beer, ever."

"So, gin and sin huh?"

"That's what we named this drink when I came up with it. Not that it's that complicated, but it had something to do with Gin, and things I'm willing to do while I'm drinking it," Tempest answered Vince's question as she added ice to a tall glass before adding about a triple shot of gin, juice and a splash of the red syrup Jesse had provided before stirring it with a straw.

"That sounds interesting."

"Maybe I'll tell you the story someday," she answered with a wink and headed away from him, back toward the living room.

"Not so fast," Vince called, catching up to her and grabbing her arm. "I think we need some ground rules for our contest."

"What contest?" she asked, feigning ignorance.

"It's ok. If you're scared'a me kickin' your ass, I understand."

"Oh it's on now. What rules?"

"Well, if you're going to be mixing triples, either we need a time limit on how long you have to wait between drinks because it's gonna take me a hell of a lot longer to drink three beer than it is you to drink that one drink or some other way to let me keep up."

"Maybe you need to let the pussy drinks have a night off and drink something with alcohol in it." Her raised eyebrow invited him to have a comeback to her comment. He let her down, for once.

"Done. Rum and coke it is. I'll even be nice enough to say my one beer counts as the same as your one first whatever that is."

"Who's gonna keep score?"

"How so?"

"Well, as we get drunker, who's gonna keep track of how many shots each of us has had?"

He seemed to think for a second. "Mia," he finally answered. "She doesn't drink. Too young."

"So'm I. What's the point?"

"Wait up. You're too young to drink?" He wondered what he might have done at races. He hadn't figured her for a minor.

"Well, in this country. Jesse's only two months older than I am."

He breathed an internal sigh of relief. She was legal, just not over twenty one. "Ok then, let's ask Mia if she'll keep track."

"Lets." Mia had told her to party, hadn't she?

After an explanation of what was going to occur, Mia reluctantly agreed to keep score.

"Guess I can't let you outta my sight now," Vince said, forcing his voice to sound like that was a real trial for him.

"Why? Mia can keep track. All we have to do is make sure to tell her each time we make a new drink."

"Yeah, and trust you not to lie about how strong you're making yours."

"Fine, follow me around all night. Makes me no never mind." She headed for the dancing area of the living room.

"No way you're going out there then, Mouth. I don't dance."

"You don't need to dance to watch me from over there and make sure I don't go back to the kitchen."

He shrugged. "I'll be watching you from my chair."

"You do that." She headed into the middle of the crowd as the song changed from straight techno to Whigfield's 'Saturday Night'. She started to dance with Mia and Letty in the middle of the floor and was mildly aware of Vince picking up his guitar on the side of the room, but she decided to tune it out. When the song was over, so was her first drink. She held her empty glass over her head as a signal of what she was doing and started to slide through the crowd to the kitchen. By the time Vince got in with her she was already starting to pour her gin into a shot glass. He made a show of inspecting her glass to ensure it was empty before he let her put anything in it.

He watched as she made herself another triple. "Damn, you feelin' that yet Mouth?"

"Maybe a little. Lemme get this one down and I'll let you know. You gonna make yourself somethin' or are you conceding your defeat already?" By the time he had his drink made she had half her second down. "You better suck it up or you're gonna fall way off the pace."

"But I'll catch up when you pass out."

"I've never passed out. Never."

"I find that hard to believe if you often drink like you are now."

"There's another way to drink?"

"Yeah, they talk about something called in moderation all the time. Never figured that one out myself." He made show of scratching his head.

"I bet there's a lot you never figured out yet though, so who's to say if it really means anything."

"You got a smart answer for everything, don't ya?"

"Mostly." She sucked down the end of her second triple and started making another. "Better remember to inform Mia how much I'm up to now. Third triple vs. you and your beer and one triple."

He swigged his drink down like it was water before grimacing at the strength of it. "Here comes two."

"Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout." She waited until he had his drink in hand before slinking back into the center of all the Toretto's gyrating friends. She looked toward the corner and saw her cousin making out with one of the blonde airheads from races. She turned away with her finger down her throat mockingly. She went up to Mia. "This makes my third triple. Keep track."

"You're gonna make yourself sick."

"Don't sweat it girl, I know what I'm doin' here."

"He's a big boy. You can't win this one."

"I'll give him a good run for his money. Just watch."

The evening wore on. Vince couldn't believe how much Tempest managed to drink and yet continue to stay upright and continued to dance. He was really feeling all the liquor in his blood and he'd bet she was too, but she was really good at hiding it. By the time the first slow number came along he realized almost her whole quart was gone. Then he looked back into the living room and noticed she was dancing with some guy. Dancing with some guy to music by the Dave Matthews Band. _Oh hell no!_

One well placed shove and the other man was looking for someone else to dance with. She looked up, angry with him. "What'd you do that for?"

"Cause I'm the one watching you tonight."

"You're startin' to show your drunkenness. That makes no sense. You can still watch me if I dance with people." She watched him shrug. "'Sides, you said you don't dance so if I don't dance with other people, how'm I gonna?"

"I'll make an exception if it means I get to be the one with my hands all over you."

"You had your turn."

"I'll take another one."

She looked around the room. There was only half the crowd from the first of the night left around the place. Dom and Letty were no where to be found. Jesse was gone. Leon was occupied with a blonde girl in a chair in the corner. Mia was sitting on a couch talking to a girl she knew. "Maybe you can leave my ass alone for five minutes this time."

"Where's the fun in that?" He took her question as an invitation to go ahead and grab her. He aped the other men who were dancing with girls, simply swaying around in a circle with his arms around her. Simply to aggravate her, he allowed his hands to roam farther down her back and past her waist. Rather than spitting fire at him, which was secretly his wish she threw her head back and laughed.

"Men are so predictable."

He trailed his lips softly over her shoulder, up her collarbone, and up her neck before nibbling gently on her earlobe. "Still predictable?"

"Nope, you definitely violated my expectations that time."

Despite the fact he was pretty sure he'd decided not to go where he knew it was going with Jesse's 'baby cousin' as the kid called her, he found himself running his hands into her hair to tilt her head up from the place it had come to rest against his shoulder to allow him access to her mouth. When she realized his intent her lips parted slightly in anticipation. He stopped the half assed dancing effort he had been making and held her still with his hands in her curls, cradling the back of her head as he nibbled at the corner of her mouth.

The feeling of his shaggy beginnings of a beard against her cheek made her smile.

"Something funny?" he asked with a smile.

"You tickle me sometimes with all this hair," she chuckled, stroking his jaw line.

"Is that a good thing, or a not good thing?"

"I'm sure it's likely a very not good thing in the long run, but it seems pretty good from the place I'm standing in right now."

Her reminder of how what they were doing was likely going to complicate things threw him for a moment. "You look like you need another drink."

"Since we're tied up I guess that means you do too."

"I guess you're right. Say," he stopped in his tracks on the way to the kitchen. "Do you drink tequila?"

"If I want to wake up as sick as a dog in the morning."

"What are the odds that ain't gonna happen anyway?"

"Not great."

"Exactly. Come on, I got an idea."

"That doesn't bode well for the future of the human race."

"Ha ha." He dragged her into the kitchen and backed her up against the counter. "Wait there."

"Yes sir!"

He didn't retort, just shot her a withering look. He was back a second later with a bottle of pale amber liquid and a shot glass in one hand and a salt shaker in the other. He set them on the counter beside her and got some lime wedges out of the fridge. "We don't have lemons so lime will have to do."

"Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?"

"Likely." He pressed a lime wedge peel side in against her lips. "Come on. I know you know what to do."

She surrendered to his plan, taking the fruit between her teeth. He licked her shoulder, sprinkled her with salt, licked the salt, shot the tequila and took the lime out of her mouth with his own. He shook his head with a grimace as the fiery liquid slid down his throat. "Your turn."

Mia found them a few shots later, Vince sitting in a kitchen chair in a sprawl, Tempest straddling his lap, about to lick salt off his shoulder for her 'absolute last shot of the night, period' which was an ultimatum she'd issued twice already and had allowed him to pressure her past twice as well. Mia waited in the shadows and watched the Canadian girl's eyes screw shut as she sucked the juice out of the lime. As soon as the remains of it were out of her mouth, Vince was hauling her lips down to his. Mia had her worries about where things with them would end everyone up, but she kept it to herself. "Everyone's gone home. Time to head to bed guys. Nights over. It's four am."

"Shit, really?" Tempest leaned over backwards and looked at Mia upside down, using her grip on Vince's shoulders to ensure she didn't tip right back onto the floor. "It's that late?"

"Yeah. You're gonna be so sick tomorrow. Should I get you a bucket for beside the couch?"

"Yes please," Tempest answered with a grin. "I'll likely be using it." She had to go along with the act and she knew it.

Mia left the room to get a bucket, shaking her head in disbelief that anyone could sound cheerful about needing a bucket to throw up into.

"You're not gonna be bunking on the couch tonight, are you?"

"Dunno. Am I?"

"Hell no," he grabbed her hips and pulled her down tight to his lap. "You know what you do to me."

"Annoy you, anger you, tease you, frustrate you?"

"Yes, yes, yes, and oh yes."

She smirked. "Good."

Before he could answer, Mia returned to the room with a bucket in hand. "There you go. Bed. At least the basement stays dark all day long."

"Small blessings," Tempest agreed and climbed off Vince's lap to accept Mia's offering.

"Night." Mia walked toward the stairs.

Leaving Vince to turn off the lights if he was so inclined, she headed down the stairs and started pawing through her suitcase.

A moment later he walked up behind where she was bent over and stopped to enjoy the view. Her borrowed skirt barely covered her ass when she was bent over and he fought an urge to push it up just enough more to see what kind of panties she had on under it. "What're you doin'?"

"Lookin' for my PJs."

"Why?"

"So I can change for bed."

"All the PJ's you need for tonight you got on already under that skirt."

"Smooth," she teased. "You try that line out in your head first, or just go with it?"

"Always runnin' that mouth."

"I can't come waltzing out of your room in the morning without a stitch on, genius."

"I guess not," he agreed. He also grinned at the thought.

She stood up and handed him a bundle of her clothes and Mia's bucket. "I'm gonna take a quick shower and use the facilities. I know where to find you."

"Aw, that's not fair."

"It's not attractive for a half grown man to pout."

He took her hand and pressed it to the front of his jeans. "Does that feel half grown?"

She licked her lips compulsively. "No."

He pulled her closer and put his lips to her neck in the sensitive spot he already knew she liked, where her shoulder joined her neck, before murmuring, "come to bed with me, Trouble."

"Give me five minutes. I swear I won't be any longer."

"Better not be," he relented and watched her wander into the bathroom, slightly unsteady on her feet. He took personal comfort from the fact she'd made out with him sober before she'd done so drunk. She knew what she was doing, it was of her own free will. He took her stuff into his room and turned on the lamp to wait for her, kicking back on his bed after taking his shoes and socks off.

As soon as she had the bathroom door locked she started the shower running full blast. Before getting in she bent over the toilet and made herself throw up. When she stopped the first time she did it again, just to be sure her stomach was empty. She knew it was stupid but the only way she kept up with guys the size of Vince was purging as much of what she took in right back out as soon as she could. She got drunk enough to fool them, but stayed sober enough to avoid having her stomach pumped. She brushed her teeth very thoroughly before drinking three big glasses of water. She used the elastic she'd slid on her wrist in the other room to tie her hair up so it wouldn't get wet and stepped into the shower. She washed quickly and got out. That was about when she realized she hadn't thought to ask for a towel. Then she realized she'd sent all her night stuff with Vince into his room. It was either try to put a leather skirt back on over her wet ass, or just dart to his room in her birthday suit. She opened the bathroom door a crack and peaked out. The living area was in total darkness and there was only one bedroom door with a crack of light under it. She was fairly sure it was the room Vince had indicted as his.

She rushed the door and opened it a crack. She saw Vince reclined on his bed with his eyes closed. She stepped in the room and shut the door. When she turned back to the room his eyes were open and focused on her.

She stepped into his room without a stitch on and still covered in little beads of water which glistened on her skin in the lamp light. He got up with a growl and stalked her across the room.

She watched him come at her like a jungle cat, predatory and graceful. She fought a need to cover her 'private areas' with her hands, not used to letting strange men see her naked, let alone with the light on. To fight the need she fixed her eyes on his and watched him make his way over to her. "I was worried you'd fallen asleep."

"As if I could, hearing the water running and thinking of you naked in the shower." He pulled the elastic out of her hair, letting it fall around her shoulders and back. He took the one step needed to back her into the door and crowd her there, his big body lining up with hers and her hips finding their way into his palms. He claimed her lips with a growl. He never thought back when she was teasing him that afternoon that the night would end with her naked in his room. But she had, and he was going to make the most of it.

Some time later, he settled her against his side with a satisfied smile. She settled in with a happy sigh, draping her arm over his stomach with her hand resting on his hip. She seemed ok, but he knew after the way she had cried out earlier he was going to have to ask. "You ok?"

"Fine, why?"

"I hurt you. I could tell."

"A little, just at first." She shrugged. "It was worth it in the end."

"You're sure you're ok?"

"I'm better than ok. I'm fan-fuckin'-tastic."

"When you say stuff like that to me I want you again. If I wasn't so tired, and starting to downgrade drunk to hung over, I'd keep you up another hour or two."

"I'd have to let you," she finished her answer with a huge yawn.

"I'd have to keep you real interested or you'd fall asleep on me," he chuckled. Something told him he should be insulted, but given what her night had been like he couldn't find it in himself to take it personal.

"Maybe," she mumbled sleepily. Since she had been driving since eight am the day before, she had been up for close to twenty four hours. _And what a twenty four hours they had been._

"Go to sleep, Trouble."

"Mkay," she sighed against his chest and did as ordered, for once in her life. He watched her sleep curled against him, her chest rising and falling softly as she drifted before he reached out to pull the sheets over them and turned out the light.

He was always doing things to complicate his life. Jesse's cousin wasn't someone he could just play around with. Of course, he mused to himself, it likely wouldn't be such a hardship to treat her well for two weeks. If they were two weeks with nights like last night, it wouldn't be much of a hardship at all. They both knew she was going home weekend after next, so it wasn't like she was expecting more out of him than company for those two weeks. He had to think she was too smart to think that kind of long distance relationship would work.

It had been nice to sleep with a girl who he was sure wasn't faking her responses simply because of who she was with. Tempest didn't have the personality to fake anything. He had no doubt she hadn't been kidding in the least when she'd told him that if she didn't like the way he did something in bed she would just tell him to do it again. He was sure he more passed out than fell asleep right around then, with questions about how she'd managed to drink so much and not become alcohol poisoned running around his head.


	4. Of Daydreams and Heated Conversations

AN: The unedited version of the story is posted at an ezboard I'm a member of. I'll ask the ladies who own the board if they mind me pimping it a bit, and if they don't than I'll provide the link to their join form. You do have to prove you're over eighteen to be a member of the board it's on, however. Once I have an answer, I'll put it up with the next update so those interested can join if you qualify, and read the entirety of the story. With that said, here is yet another warning that this story walks on the razor's edge of M. You're warned. (To the person who asked who reported me before, I don't know. They left an anon review to the effect that they had or would. I have my ideas because a certain group of immature people sort of stalked me around here for awhile, but I truly have no idea who it actually was.)

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter four: **Of Daydreams and Heated Conversations**

When he woke up the next day the main thing on his brain was how much it hurt. He liked to drink and get drunk as much as the next person, but the heights of drunk he had been pushed to by the silly rivalry between him and the small package of trouble still sleeping pretty much where he'd left her staggered him. _At least I didn't have a reputation for having common sense to uphold_, he thought with a grin. If he had, he knew he would have shot it to shit with everything he'd done the night before. He wondered for a moment longer about what it was like to find out the girl from the night before was still there the morning after. It wasn't something he would normally have allowed. Figuring how strangely comfortable he was with it again tied back to how he knew the commitment wouldn't be for longer than the two weeks she'd be there for, he decided he really needed to use the washroom.

He slid carefully out from under her, staggered to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, drank about eight gallons of water and wandered back, feeling slightly more human. A glance at his clock showed the time to be just after one pm. He stood beside his bed for a moment, wondering what to do. Get back in and risk waking her, or just get up for the day and risk killing the first person who looked at him cross-eyed. He wasn't the most pleasant person to be around when he was so hung over. He sat on the edge of his bed at watched her to see if she'd wake up at the motion. She didn't. Rather, she sighed and wrapped herself up in a little ball. Figuring if she wasn't ready to be awake, neither was he, he uncurled her as gently as he could and allowed her to resume her position from the night before.

She almost seemed to melt into him with a happier sigh than the first one she'd breathed. He allowed his hand to idly rub up and down her back as she slept. He tried to go back to sleep himself, but it just wasn't an option. But he knew he was still happier in the dark of his room with no one to talk to than he would be up and about, facing his friends and the public in general. At least in the mostly dark room he could pretend he didn't have a splitting headache. The only thing that gave him some comfort was the fact that she'd be just as ill when she finally woke up.

He found himself with one of her curls wrapped around his finger as he watched her sleep, her deep and rhythmic breathes the only sound in the room. It was like everyone else had left the house. The place was never as quiet as it currently was after lunch time on a Sunday. There should have been people walking around over their heads. As he pondered where everyone would be, with a small groan Tempest regained consciousness. She blinked sleepily in the gloom.

As flashes of her conduct the night before returned to her in images of intense colour, sound, and sensation she pulled the blankets up over her head with a sigh. After everything she'd so boldly done last night, how was she supposed to face him now?

He unburied her head and used a finger under her chin to tip her face up. Her eyes were fully closed. "Regrets?" he asked, oddly upset with the thought she might say yes.

She shook her head no. "It's just a little awkward, is all."

"Haven't woken up in guy's beds very often?"

"Never," she answered before she thought better of it. She should have padded her answer just a few.

"Never?" he questioned. He was wondering if she meant never, like never ever. That was more than he wanted to be involved with, even if it was too late to do anything about it now.

"Never, as in never stuck around to wake up in the same place as the guy."

"You never dated a guy and slept over at his place?"

"Not after sex, no. Normally when I stayed over it was because I was too tired to go home." She changed the subject. "How long have you been watching me sleep?"

"'Bout half an hour. I tried to join you, but just couldn't. How's your head?"

"Fine," she answered honestly, again before she could think better of it.

"How's your head fine? You had the same amount to drink as me."

"That's why I mostly drink gin. It doesn't give me bad hangovers."

"You're feeding me the biggest line of shit I've ever heard," he growled.

She knew she was busted, but when he was clearly miserable, how was she supposed to admit she'd cheated? "I drank a shit load of water before I came to bed last night."

"That tells me why you're not using Mia's bucket. It doesn't tell me why you don't have a splitting headache."

Maybe if she admitted to the one time she'd gotten sick right after they went downstairs he'd leave her alone. Or maybe he'd gloat for the rest of the time she knew him too, she realized with a mental groan. She shrugged, deciding to admit nothing. "I dunno why. I just got lucky?"

"Well, yeah you did," he answered with a satisfied smile, "but so did I, so that doesn't explain it either."

She blushed. She couldn't help it for once. She hoped the darkness of the room hid the colour in her face. She decided to turn the situation around on him. "They say that a massage is good for relaxing. Maybe if I just rubbed your forehead for you it'd make your head feel better."

"I guess it couldn't hurt." He knew he'd try again to find out the secret of how she had not only kept up, but come out of it better than he had. He had about a hundred pounds on her and all of it muscle. There wasn't any way that she should have been able to handle her liquor better than him. But for now he was oddly intrigued by the thoughts of her hands on him and was willing to just go with her plan instead of arguing with her.

She brushed his eyes closed before sitting up onto her knees beside him and running gentle fingers over his brow. As he seemed to become more relaxed her touch grew more confident, her stroking more firm. After a few minutes her position of leaning over became uncomfortable. She pulled the sheets half way up his chest before throwing a leg over him and settling onto his stomach. Leaning forward, she resumed her stroking. His hands came to rest on her calves.

He fought the need to open his eyes and see her. He knew she was still as naked as when she'd come into his room the night before. He figured the only reason she'd gotten up her courage to be where she was, was the fact she figured he was asleep or close to. After a few more minutes it wasn't far off to say he was half asleep. That was until she leaned down and pressed a soft, closed mouth kiss on his lips. "Better?"

He ran his hands up her calves, over the backs of her thighs and up to her ribcage to hold her steady before he opened his eyes, wanting to see her perched on top of him in her birthday suit. "Gettin' there. You know, they do say there's one really good thing for headaches."

"Aspirin?" she asked.

"Nope," he answered. "Come down here a minute, Trouble."

She leaned down. "Wha?"

"I'm still an invalid, you gotta come closer."

She leaned down even farther, until her lips were a hair's breadth away from his. "Wha?"

"Mornin'," he drawled before he started to kiss her and watched her eyes close.

Half an hour later she was laying on her side in his bed with the sheet tucked under her armpits, watching him pull his pants up. Foolish or not for her to get with him once, let alone twice, she sure couldn't deny he was one hell of a nice specimen of manhood. He bent to get a tank top out of the bottom drawer of his dresser and she watched the muscles play across his back with fascination. Then she noted the eight crescent shaped wounds across his shoulder blades and the several longer scratches there as well. He pulled his tank top on and some of them still showed.

"You might need to rethink your choice of shirt there sweetness."

"Why's that?"

"I guess I got a little carried away. I guess I should get something to clean you up with."

"Is that why my back's itchy?" he asked, crossing to his mirror and turning to look over his shoulder. "Damn, you must got a good set'a nails on you Trouble."

"Pretty good."

"You gettin' up today, or just gonna stay there?"

"Stayin' here has its appeal."

"Why's that?"

"Cause the whole place knows what we did last night."

"How'd ya figure?"

"Because Leon and Jesse walked by that empty couch this mornin'. They know I slept somewhere else."

"Well, yeah, but in all likelihood they heard both of us last night anyway." He grinned in a very self satisfied manner. Until he remembered that the loudest noise of all was the one where he pushed her too far too fast and made her cry out. He walked back up beside his bed and looked down at her. The expression in his eyes was unreadable. She stared back, unblinking. He never should have had her again in the morning, knowing she was likely sore as it was. "You ok?"

"Fine. Why? Do I look ill?"

"No," he shrugged. "I'm just curious if you're ok. Not too," he sighed, not wanting to put it into words. "too sore after everything."

"I'm fine," she stammered.

"Good. That's good." He grabbed a hold of the blankets and moved to throw them back off her. "Get up and I'll take you out for breakfast."

"Go get my duffle out of the living room, would you?"

"Why?"

"I need clothes. If you want me to let you take me out in public I need to be dressed and not in pyjamas."

He went and got her bag. She forced herself to dress in front of him without making a point of asking him to turn his back or close his eyes. After everything he'd already seen she knew it was silly to get embarrassed about him watching her dress. Once she had on a pair of denim cut-offs and a tank top she fished to the bottom of her bag and got out her favourite flip flops. "Ok, I'm ready."

He opened the door and motioned for her to precede him out of the room. She stopped at the foot of the stairs. "I'll tell ya, I might not have woken up with a headache, but I sure am sore. That was a lot of dancing and those look like a lot of stairs."

Vince tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to face him. The minute she did he crouched down, put his shoulder into her stomach and stood up with her slung over his shoulder like a sack of wheat. He started up the stairs with one hand on her ass and the other holding her legs steady against his chest.

"This is high handed Vince. Set me down."

"You didn't want to walk up the stairs so I'm not making you. The right answer is thank you Vince."

"I didn't ask you to carry me."

"I know. I did it to be nice."

"You decided to carry me like a big bag of flour over your shoulder to be nice?"

"Yeah." He crested the stairs and found the house wasn't empty, as he had assumed, but that everyone was suffering from the night before except Mia. They were all sitting around the kitchen table looking miserable while Mia looked around smugly, clearly wanting to say I told you so.

"She's so sick she couldn't even walk up the stairs?" Mia asked.

"She's not sick at all. She danced her legs too sore to walk up the stairs," Vince said as he set her down on her feet.

Mia took in Tempest's cheerful demeanour. "I know what you drank. You should be curled up in a ball of misery someplace."

"I'm very resilient. I told you I had it on lock last night, remember?"

"I will find out how you managed it," Vince growled against her ear.

"You ain't that slick, Slick," she retorted with a smirk.

"Oh, we'll see tonight who's slick, Trouble."

"Trouble's a good name for you cuz," Jesse said in a low tone.

Tempest took in his slightly green appearance. "Too much to drink last night Jess?"

He nodded with a groan. "And we've been walking on egg shells not to be loud and wake up Vince, cause none of us wanted to even hear about it, knowing how hung over he was bound to be, and how nasty."

"It was a pretty sad sight," Tempest admitted with a chuckle. Then she watched Dom's head snap up. She realized belatedly that he had gone to bed with Letty before most of the stuff she and Vince had done the night before, and that he wouldn't know the sleeping situation in the basement because surely Leon and Jesse wouldn't have just brought it up in conversation. But he knew now. And he didn't look happy about it. To cover up her discomfort she went and kissed Jesse on the back of his head, wrapping an arm around his neck affectionately.

"We're goin' out for a greasy breakfast. Anyone else down?" Vince offered, saving them both from answering the questions clear in Dom's eyes.

"For real Dawg," Leon stood up and rubbed his gut.

"Count me in too," Jesse got up as well, then leaned on his cousin, pretending he couldn't stand without her help.

"I'm fine, thanks anyway," Mia cried off. Letty and Dom also decided to stay home. Jesse and Leon both got into Leon's car.

"You ridin' with me or takin' your own car?" Vince asked Tempest when they were standing on the driveway.

"Ridin' with you I guess. Lemme grab my shades outta the car."

He watched her dart across the lawn, unlock her doors and bend over into her car. He couldn't help himself from admiring how the denim moulded itself to her body when she bent over. In a lot of ways it made him wish the only thing they had in common wasn't between the sheets. God knew all they did was drive each other crazy the rest of the time.

"I'm ready. You gonna drive this car, or daydream on the driveway all day."

"Depends."

"On what?"

"If I tell you what I'm dreaming about will you make it come true?"

"Not on the driveway, but if you're a good boy today who knows what tonight might bring." _Did I just say that?_

"I think I'm in trouble. I don't think I've ever spent a whole day bein' good."

"Well, you might find my definition of good and other people's is a little different. Come on, we should go before they get impatient waitin' on us."

"You just mean before Dom comes out here and gives you hell for corrupting his best friend."

"I didn't corrupt anybody. If anything you corrupted me."

Since he knew she was right he really didn't know what to say. "Just shut up and get in the car."

"You're comin' dangerously close to usin' up all your freebees. Soon I'ma half to start kickin' your ass for this shit."

"I live for the day you try."

"So if I try now, you go away?"

"Come again?"

"Well, if I try to kick your ass now, your reason to live will go away and you'll stop, right?"

"I know you think you're funny, but you ain't."

"I find myself very funny. I'm also likely operating at a level of humour too far above you to grasp, so I understand that you don't get it."

We she saw the look in his eyes at that insult some instinct told her to get away. She ran toward the Skyline. "I think I'll ride with Jess and Leon."

Much to her disappointment, it wasn't that hard for him to catch her. He did so with a growl, threw her over his shoulder again and carried her toward the passenger side of the Nissan. "You'll ride with me so I can yell at you on the way there."

She got in the car, rolling her eyes.

"You ever seen anyone stand up to Vince like your cousin does?"

"No. I'm kinda surprised he hasn't killed her yet."

"Yeah. I was a bit shocked how far he let her go too."

"Yeah, well I was more than a bit shocked how far she let him go."

"What'd you mean?"

"The last thing I expected was for her to hook up with Vince. I was hoping to convince her to move down here."

"What's that got to do with her hooking up with Vince?"

"Well, he's not likely to encourage her to stick around now, is he? You know he's only ok with her because she's leaving in two weeks."

"Jesse, she doesn't have to go to another country for them to be ok with a 'friends with benefits' situation. I don't think Vince ever lied to her about what he was looking for, and you said she knew the score."

"Yeah, well saying what she knows I want to hear and telling the truth are two different things. Truth is, my cousin is good at hiding her true feelings. She thinks to show any emotion that's not bad-ass is a weakness. What's she gonna say? I think I really like you despite the fact you're clearly in love with this other girl so I'll have sex with you hoping you change your mind?"

"Isn't it possible that she just wanted to have a fling while she was on vacation?"

"Maybe, but she hasn't ever worked that way before. Besides, they have nothing in common."

"Maybe not, but the way they bounce off each other is good for creating sparks. See, it's not likely to get serious between them anyway. They only have chemistry because of how they rub each other wrong. There wouldn't be anything to build a real relationship on there."

"It didn't sound like they rubbed each other wrong last night."

"You heard too, huh?" Leon asked with a smirk.

Jesse grimaced. "Unfortunately. I tried to pretend I didn't know what it was."

"I thought Dom was gonna blow his top when she let it slip what they did. So much for trying to keep him in the dark."

"He'll deal. Dunno what his problem is anyway."

"You know Dom. He doesn't like anything in his life he can't control. He didn't count on your cousin being so strong willed."

"She is that. But still human under the exterior. I just don't think Vince would know if things were getting out of hand with her because she'd do her best to hide it from the rest of us, him and the world."

"What are you gonna do about it now Jess?"

"Try to find as many things for her and me to do that he won't do with us that I can."

"Worth a try, I guess." Leon clearly didn't think it was as big a deal as Jesse was making it out to be.

They got to the restaurant and found Vince and Tempest standing beside the car involved in yet another 'heated conversation.' "It never ends with those two," Leon said with a smile.

They got out of the car and walked over to where Vince and Tempest were fighting. "If you hadn't taken the corner at thirty kilometres an hour too fast I wouldn't have been jolted and it wouldn't have spilled."

"I never take corners too fast. I took the corner just fine. You shoulda been watchin' what you were doin'."

"Its water you big fuckin' baby. It'll dry."

"Every time you two are together I start to think Dom was right. You both seriously need to shut the fuck up." Leon chuckled.

"He needs to grow the fuck up! If he didn't act like a two year old most of the time I wouldn't have so much to argue with him about."

"Argue about? Try bitch and moan about."

"Fuck you pal. You only think I'm bitching about anything because you're too dense to get the truth."

"Bitch is a good word for you, that's for sure."

"I'm glad you think so. I somehow doubt I could sum you up in one word. I'd need several. Like ignorant, backward, and stupid. Scratch that last one. Calling you stupid would be an insult to stupid people everywhere. And last but not least, how about asshole? Now there's a word."

As Jesse watched Vince's face start to turn red he grabbed his cousin by the wrist. "Comeon T. Let's go get a seat."

"Yeah, lets." She turned her back on Vince with a flip of her hair over her shoulder and swished off with Jesse.

Leon and Vince started to follow after giving them a few seconds head start. "What happened there, dawg? When you came up the stairs you were like old pals, now all of a sudden you almost kill each other in the parking lot?"

"Her big mouth happened."

"It's gonna be a long two weeks if the two of you are always at each other's throats."

"Well, we're not always at each other's throats," Vince said, smirking as some of his good humour was restored.

"What possessed you there anyway? Wouldn't thought you'd'a known better."

He shrugged. "She's a nice lookin' girl who isn't attached to anyone else. What's to know better?"

"She's practically family dawg."

"No she ain't."

"How do you figure? She's Jesse's cousin and Jesse's family."

"Jesse's family because he lives with us. She don't."

"However you wanna rationalize it, I guess," Leon said and gave up with a sigh. He hadn't ever thought he'd meet anyone as hard headed as Vince. Then he'd met Jesse's cousin. Too bad she then had to meet her male counterpart and cause sparks libel to start fires all over the place. When they walked into the restaurant it was to find Jesse and Tempest sharing one side of a booth. Jesse had his arm around Tempest's neck and was busily giving her a noogie. She was trying to fight him off without a lot of success.

Leon snorted his laughter into his hand. He looked at Vince and couldn't make sense of the look on his friend's face. Their attention was brought back to the couple in the booth when Jesse yelped. It was clear from the way he was rubbing his arm that it had crossed in front of her mouth and she'd taken the opportunity to make him let go by biting him. She turned to sit cross-legged on the seat, facing Jesse. Jesse faced her back.

Leon started up to the table and slid in. Vince followed him in a moment later, still strangely quiet.

"What are you two doin?" Leon asked.

"Staring contest," Jesse answered, never looking away from his cousin.

"Isn't that a little childish?" Vince asked.

"If anyone would know, it sure would be you," Tempest snapped back, her gaze never leaving Jesse's.

"You have a scar at the corner of your left eye," Jesse said to Tempest, trying to distract her and stop them from another verbal sparring match.

"I know and so should you. You gave it to me."

"I did not."

"You did too! We were four and we were playing outside at Nanny's one winter. You had a spade ended shovel you were using for something and you swung it around in the air and caught me in the face. Don't you remember?"

"Oh yeah! You cried blue murder for ten minutes before someone got you ice cream and you got to sit at the adult table for supper. I was pissed."

"Well you scarred me for life, how do you think I felt?"

"I have a scar on my knee from where you pushed me off my bike and I fell."

"We're far from square."

Leon and Vince shared a look. For two people who hadn't seen each other in seven years, they were extremely close.

"You coulda put my eye out."

"I coulda broken my arm or leg."

"A broken arm or leg can be fixed. You only get two eyes. If you lose one, there aren't any do over's."

"She's got you there Jess," Leon interjected, laughing.

"Shut up!" Jesse retorted.

"J?"

"Yeah T?"

"How we gonna order if we can't look at our menus?"

"Like so many other times in the past, we're going to have to declare ourselves tied at staring each other down and just stop, I suppose."

"Ok. One, two, three."

They both looked away at the same time.

"You two are like a pair of kids," Leon told them, still laughing.

"At least we fit right in with present company," Tempest shot back, her head cocked to the side as she smiled at Leon.

"Hey, you got no beef with me!" Leon held his hands up in mock surrender.

"I never said I was talking to _you,_ either."

"If you're gonna call me names, at least call them to my face," Vince growled.

"If I feel like talking to you later, you'll be the second to know." She picked up her menu and started to look over the Sunday all day breakfast menu. "As for looking at your face, I'm about to eat so I'd rather not."

Jesse kicked her in the shin under the table, trying to get her to stop pushing the volatile Vince so close to the edge. They were saved from hearing Vince's answer to her insult by the arrival of the waitress.

"Fruit and toast? That's what you're having for a breakfast after a night of drinking?" Leon asked, incredulous with her choices.

She shrugged one shoulder. "I like fruit and toast."

"What about bacon, ham, sausage and eggs. You know, breakfast food. Grease for your stomach."

"Not in the mood. If I'm still hungry when I'm done than I'll have pancakes."

"You never were much of a breakfast eater," Jesse reminded.

"Still makes me sick to eat in the morning half the time. Dunno why. I'm normally ok with light food though."

"You won't like the mornings around our place than," Leon said. "Mia makes the whole spread everyday."

"We need it. We work hard all day long," Jesse said. It was like he was trying to convince Tempest it was ok for him to eat a thousand calorie breakfast everyday.

"Well, you're still a beanpole Jesse, so I guess it don't matter how much you eat. I gotta watch my intake when I'm hittin' the gym. I guess it doesn't matter so much now, because I'm on vacation and all, but when I'm goin to the gym I need at least four hundred grams of protein a day."

"You're too into all that bodybuilder crap for me to follow cuz. How is it you don't bulk up like a dude, anyway?"

"It's more effort than just lifting weights for a woman to bulk up the way female body builders do. I spend half my week doing cardio. I suppose you still just 'get enough exercise at work'?"

"Of course. Leon and Vince go to the gym and so does Dom though."

"You never thought you should tag along and see if you couldn't get strong enough to beat me at arm wrestling?"

"I like to take it easy on you. You're a girl and all."

"Yeah right. You're just ashamed of how easy I can take you."

"Yeah, well you still pull wrenches. I'm more evolved than a common grease monkey now. I do the intellectual part of mechanics now."

"Keep on telling yourself that Jess," Tempest said, before winking at her cousin.

The waitress dropped off their meals and Tempest almost gagged at the sight and smell of all the food placed in front of the guys. She started to eat her fruit, eating being one of the only things she did in a lady like fashion. She had always been a slow eater and today was no exception. Everyone else finished way ahead of her, watching her take dainty bites and ensure none of her food touched any of her other food on her plate.

Vince watched her bite into a section of orange, watched juice run down her chin, watched her tongue dart out to get as much of it as possible and then watched her lick her fingers clean all while fighting a need to lean across the table and lick her lips and fingers clean for her. Still pissed off at her or not, he still found himself wanting her and it pissed him off even more. He watched as her long fingers shredded the crust and back off her toast and she ate only the buttered top she scraped off the unbuttered side. She again licked the butter off her fingers.

Jesse looked between Vince and Tempest. "Say cuz?"

"Yeah?" she asked after she swallowed the end of her breakfast.

"Wanna hit the beach after we go home?"

"Hell yeah! You know it." She turned to look at Jesse. "Can we take the Skyline?" She pouted.

"Of course. Can I drive the Skyline?"

She looked like she was seriously going to say no. She saw the look on Jesse's face. "Do you know _how_ to drive the Skyline?" she asked hesitantly.

"Yeah, I've driven Leon's a few times."

"Than yes, on the way there you may drive the Skyline."

"It's painted like a girl's car," Vince mumbled in a low tone.

"It _is_ a girl's car, genius."

"Jesus, you two. It's been an hour since the fight in the parking lot. Let it go!" Leon looked from one to the other.

Tempest just looked at Leon with one eyebrow cocked. He grinned at her. "Not in the cards for you to let anything go, is it?"

"Nope," she chuckled at his swift understanding. "I'm a grudge holder, guilty as charged."

"Let's go," Jesse said as she started to push Tempest out of the booth. "We better get a move on."

"Ok." She stood up and waited for Jesse before heading for the register and pulling a Visa out of her back pocket. She waited only long enough after signing her slip for Jesse to pay before they walked outside the restaurant. Jesse headed for the Skyline. When he looked back and noticed Tempest had followed him right past the Maxima and was standing at the passenger side of Leon's car with him he gave her a quizzical look.

"You're not going to ride with Vince?"

"Do I look retarded?"

"No. What do you mean, anyway? You came with him."

"And then he roared at me, and I roared back and now I don't want to leave with him. You have some sort of issue with that?"

"Guess not. He might though."

"What he has issues with doesn't matter a fig to me. I'm not riding in his car again. Ever."

"Ok," Jesse let it go with a sigh and let his cousin slide into the back seat of Leon's car, Leon having unlocked the doors remotely for them from inside the restaurant. Leon got in and they started home. Before long Vince passed them on the highway and streaked past.

"I take it Prince Surly is still in a temper?" Tempest addressed her query to Leon.

"Prince Surly?" he questioned with a snort.

"She started calling him that yesterday afternoon, right after she met him," Jesse filled in with a chuckle.

"Yeah, he's still pissed. Don't think he expected you to jump ship and ride with us."

"Well, he's even stupider than I gave him credit for if he thought I was gonna give him a half hour opportunity to yell at me some more while I'm a captive audience."

By the time they made it back to the fort, the fight at the restaurant was almost forgotten as they joked and teased in the car. Leon decided to ride to the beach with them as it was a nice day. Too nice to be stuck inside, he said. When they got out of the car at home, still laughing and teasing each other, it was to find that where ever Vince had gone when he flew by them, it hadn't been home. His car was no where to be found. Grateful for the chance to get her stuff out of his room while he wasn't around, Tempest excused herself to get changed for the beach right away.

She came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, her bathing suit on under her cutoffs and tank top, her hair in pigtails and a beach bag tossed over her shoulder. She knocked on Jesse's door. "Yeah?"

"You decent?"

"Yeah, come in."

Tempest pushed his door open and walked in. "You almost ready?"

"Yeah, go check on Leon."

"I'm not goin' to check on Leon. I hardly know Leon."

"You don't need to know him to go knock on his door and see if he's ready."

"Fine," she gave up with a sigh and left Jesse's room. She knocked on Leon's door. "You decent?"

"Mostly, come on in."

She pushed his door open and found what he meant by mostly decent. He had his shorts on, but no shirt. "Jesse wants to know if you're ready."

"Almost. Just gimme a minute to find my shoes."

"Dude, you left them by the front door." She sat on his bed as she watched him root in his closet for whatever it was he thought he had to find.

"Not my sneakers. I ain't wearin' sneakers with shorts to the beach. I'm not a total fashion victim."

"So you're not gonna wear socks with your sandals?"

"No. I do know better."

"That's good. I won't have to ditch you when we get there."

"Why would you anyway?"

"'Cause I got a rep to maintain. I can't be seen with somebody who's a fashion victim."

"You wanted to wear a wifebeater to races."

"You wore a fuckin' jersey tank top!"

"I'm a guy. Like it or not, it's different for me than it is for you at races. That's just how it is."

"Yeah, well if I ever go again I'll be starting a new fashion trend for the chicks there."

"Yeah, what's that?"

"A little thing I like to call, and wait for it now, wearing clothes!" she finished with a flourish.

"Perish the thought!" Leon answered, a hand to his heart in mock fear that she would accomplish her goal and dress the women of races in clothes which didn't display every 'asset' they possessed.

"Heaven forbid they left something to the imagination."

"Well, that's where the difference between race skanks and nice girls comes into play. Nice girls leave something to the imagination. Race skanks don't."

"There was a very fine line between what Mia had me wearing and what those other girls were wearing."

"Yeah, but the line was still there."

She shrugged. "I guess so. I still missed my boots." She leaned back on his bed and stretched one leg up into the air out in front of her before studying her toes, displayed by her flip flops. The purple polish on her big toe was chipped. She shrugged before grinning at the thought that Mia would likely freak out about a little chipped polish.

"I just bet you did when you thought you were gonna have to fight those three guys."

"Don't even go there. I'm still kinda pissy that I didn't get to." She looked at Leon around her still outstretched limb. "I was having a bad night and kicking the crap outta them woulda went a long way to improving my mood."

"Where'd you learn the little thing you did with your hand to knock the middle guy out?"

"Either karate or self defence class. I don't remember which."

"You took Karate?"

"Yeah, for awhile."

"That's cool." Leon looped a towel around his neck. Before he could say anything else a growl cut in from the door.

"Well, isn't this cozy."

Leon chose to overlook the tone of the question. "We were just about to head out for the beach. You comin' dawg?"

"Not in this lifetime," Vince answered.

Tempest stood up and headed for the door. "Well, I'm ready. Leon, you comin'?"

"Yeah." He hung back, waiting to see what she would do when she reached the door, which Vince was still blocking. She hadn't made eye contact with him and it was like she was pretending he hadn't spoken and wasn't there. She slid under his arm, which was braced on the door frame, and was careful not make physical contact with him in any way. She went back into Jesse's room.

"I take it she's still being unreasonable?"

"I dunno dawg. You called her a bitch."

"She called me stupid."

"Yeah." Leon refused to get in the middle of it. "I better go. Catch you later man."


	5. Of Strobe Lights and Six Foot Holes

AN: Since someone asked, the unedited version of this story can be found at the EZBoard community 'A Few Good Men'. If you want to read the whole thing, you can join the community and do so. It's a pretty cool board, run by pretty cool ladies. However, you do have to be over eighteen to join and they do require that you actively post to the board to keep your membership. So if anyone is interested, and old enough, feel free to find the community and join if you're inclined. :) Well, if anyone is actually still reading this story, enjoy.

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By –_TempestRaces_

Chapter five – **Of Strobe Lights and Six Foot Holes**

Vince watched as Leon led the way to the stairs, Tempest and Jesse following him and laughing about some joke that likely only made sense to the two of them. She never spared him a look.

They headed for the beach together, Jesse driving, Tempest riding shotgun and Leon holding down the fort alone in the rear. They parked the car and headed out onto the sand before spreading their blankets and stretching out.

Jesse took in his cousin in a pair of boy cut bikini bottoms and a bikini top which left very little of her upper body to the imagination. "Why can't you have one of those one piece bathing suits?"

"Because I'd never get a tan that way?"

"Guys are staring at you."

"Jesse, you ain't my brother. You're not supposed to get this outraged over me in a bathing suit. And let 'em stare. Maybe I can get a date for tonight out of it."

Leon fought from informing her that all she would do would create the need for a six foot hole to be dug for the body if she showed up with another guy around the fort. Any real interest in her or no, if she showed up with another guy now it would just set Vince off. And he'd just get rid of the problem, if he acted in his typical fashion.

After several hours on the beach they got up to head for home, packing up all their stuff. The boys didn't bother putting their shirts back on and Tempest just pulled her cut offs on over her bottoms. She zipped them up, but didn't bother with the button, leaving them hanging off her hips. She took custody of her car keys over Jesse's whining and drove her own car on the way home. They walked in the front door, the three of them talking a mile a minute.

"You guys went to the beach without me?" Mia asked with a pout.

"Sorry Mia. I never thought to ask you," Jesse apologized.

"It's ok. Why don't you guys go change for supper?"

They headed down the stairs. As Tempest was pawing through her stuff looking for something to wear up to dinner she heard Jesse exclaim in his room. "Sweet!"

"What is it Jess?" she called.

"I forgot this was tonight." He came out of his room with a flyer in his hand. He handed it to her. It was advertising a huge rave party that was happening in a converted warehouse somewhere.

"You wanna go?" she asked.

"Yeah, what about you? You down?"

"This chem. free?"

"Optional," he grinned back.

"Than hell yeah, sign me up!"

"Yes!"

"What's this about?" Leon asked as he came out of his room, pulling a tank top on over his head.

"A rave."

"You too huh? Jesse never gets to go 'cause none of us will go with him."

"I'll go. Techno and house music, strobe lights, sounds like heaven."

"Maybe to you and the mad scientist here. Not to me."

"Must suck to be old," Tempest teased.

"I ain't old. I'm just not into rave parties."

"Your loss. When we leavin' J?"

"Ten, eleven," he answered with a shrug. "Up to you."

"Alright. Let's get some food and then I'll get ready."

They ate supper before heading downstairs to get ready. Tempest gathered up her stuff and locked herself in the bathroom. She took a shower and got out before drying her hair and straightening it until it fell in a sleek fall just over half way down her back. She got dressed in clothes she knew were going to freak Jesse out. Her top was cut straight across the top of her chest and came down to a point just above her belly button like a folded bandana, with nothing in back but a strap across her upper back. Her pants were tight and cropped low on her abdomen. The pants and shirt matched. Both were black with hot pink piping on the seams. She knew the black made her skin look pale, but as it was pale she was just going to have to hope it looked like she couldn't tan. She fastened the black edged in pink bands which had come with her top around her neck and upper arms before she pulled on her second pair of boots, ankle high black leather with several chunky buckles the whole way up and a three inch heel. She only hoped she'd get out of the house dressed as she was without seeing Mia. She knew she'd given the impression she didn't own any clothes that weren't undershirts or cargos to the dark woman.

She left the bathroom and ran into Vince in the living room. Literally. He walked out around a corner just as she went to head up the stairs and she bounced off his chest with a startled noise. When she regained her footing she had to fight the urge she had to put her hand over her heart to feel it racing. She also had to fight the urge she had to say she was sorry.

"Goin' out someplace?" he asked, waiting for her to blow him off. He was more than mildly curious where she was going, dressed as she was.

"Looks that way," she answered. She didn't want to start a war with him so she refrained from telling him to mind his own business.

"With?"

"Jesse."

"You ready T?" Jesse's voice called down the stairs.

"Yeah, on my way up!" She turned back to Vince. "Later."

He didn't even bother to answer, just watched her dash up the stairs. He'd get the story from Leon later, and avoid having a fight with her at the same time.

Leon offered to drive them to the party and they took him up on his offer. Tempest left her coat with him, citing not wanting to lose it as her reason. When Jesse saw what she had on he did groan and ask her why she was always going around half clothed all of a sudden. She just grinned in answer.

They had no trouble getting in and immediately fell into the middle of the dance floor, the flashing lights and bright colours making it feel like another world. They danced through three songs and a choreographed laser show, before Jesse held something up to the light. When Tempest realised what it was she hugged Jesse with a smile before putting the little blue pill on her tongue and watching Jesse take one too. She trusted him implicitly to have safe stuff.

Another forty five minutes later and the rave drug Ecstasy was coursing through her blood. Everything just felt perfect as she danced in her own world to the music. She felt euphoric. It was a rare time to find her feeling love for people she didn't know, but it was like everyone was her friend. People came and went from around them. Some stayed longer than others and some they paid more attention to than others but always constant was the throbbing beat, gyrating people, flashing lights and the dancing. Always dancing.

The huge space was lit only by the multicoloured lights of the DJ. There was no ambient light, other than the muted illumination behind the bars spaced along the walls. It was provided purely for the benefit of those working the counter, and did nothing to dispel the darkness of the party. The strobing lights gave an otherworldly air to the whole place which was only enhanced by the heightened senses of those moving to the techno beats being spun. People seemed to move in fits and starts for a moment, and then move with an enviable, fluid grace the next.

It was around five am when they finally decided they'd had enough. Neither of them had started to come down and were feeling no pain, thought both were drenched from head to toe in sweat. They decided against waking Leon up for a ride and got a cab instead. They got home half an hour later and headed for the kitchen, trying to be quiet.

"What're you doin?" Jesse asked Tempest as he watched her start opening cupboards.

"I'm gonna make us somethin' to eat."

"No you're not. You're in no shape to cook."

"I'm fine to cook. We'll have Kraft dinner."

"No we won't. We're going to bed. 'Sides, I'm not hungry yet anyway. I'll be lucky if Dom doesn't wake me up to go to work tomorrow."

"Good luck with that," Tempest giggled. "I'm glad I'm on vacation."

"Yeah, but you're sleeping on the couch that everyone else is going to walk by on their way out."

She groaned. "Thanks for reminding me. Maybe I'll sleep on your floor."

"You wouldn't find a spot of it clean enough to let you lay down."

She remembered the mess his room was in. "Oh yeah. Try to be quiet in the morning, ok?"

"Won't be me you have to worry 'bout."

They headed down the stairs, Tempest with a box of goldfish crackers under her arm. She knew when she started to come down she'd get hungry, though Jesse was right and she wasn't really hungry yet. At the bottom of the stairs she tripped and fell into Jesse, who caught her. She started to giggle and when she did he started to chuckle and soon they were both laughing full out. "Shush," she warned. "You'll wake up the rest of the house."

"I sure hope not. Well, night."

"Night J. See you in the morning."

Jesse headed into his own room and Tempest headed for her suitcase. She was ready to be wearing something far more comfortable than her rave clothes. She pulled her top and pants off before pulling on a pair of boy cut panties and a light tank top. She then put the headphones of her Discman on and started to listen to more techno at a low volume as she waited to fall asleep. She knew she wasn't likely to get much sleep but she figured she might as well try, what with the house being dark and quiet. She had to kick the blanket she had off her. It was far from cold in the basement, or she was still overheated from all her dancing.

The noise of them stumbling down the stairs right beside his room woke Vince up. He looked at the clock blearily and saw it was five thirty in the morning. "For Christ's sake," he muttered. He gave them five minutes to be settled where ever they were going to settle before he got up to go to the bathroom. He left the lamp on in his room so he could see where he was going and opened the door. The main room was dark, but the lamplight spilled out dimly to illuminate the couch where Tempest was laying. She had her eyes closed and headphones on. She was sort of wiggling as if dancing as she lay there, wearing not much of anything considering she was in a public room of the house.

He used the bathroom. On the way back to his room he found himself standing over her where she lay, still grooving either in her sleep or just with her eyes closed to whatever she was listening to. When her eyes snapped open it surprised him. He had figured her for out of it.

When she saw him looming over her in the dark she let out a muffled scream. She took her headphones off. "Why are you standing there staring at me?" she asked, panting in her shock.

"You and Jesse came down the stairs like a pack of elephants. You woke me."

"That's not a reason for you to stare at me in the dark."

"The reason I have for the staring is the fact you're not covered up and you're wearing nothing but your underwear."

"My underwear covers everything that needs covering."

"Just barely."

"Just barely would be this," she told him before blithely pulling her tank top over her head and dropping it on the floor. "Now I'm just barely covered."

"And now that's ok because you just bought yourself a bedroom to sleep in instead of on the couch," he answered her as he scooped her up.

"I told you that I'd make your day dreams come true if you were good today. You didn't hold up your end of the deal."

"What if you tell me what your dreams are and I'll make them come true instead then?" he asked as he nuzzled her neck.

She moaned before answering. "I dunno about that. You don't know what kinds of things I dream about."

"I don't imagine I'll care, as long as it ends with me inside of you." He threw her back onto his bed after kicking the door closed. He looked into her eyes. "Are you drunk?"

"Nope."

"Than why are your pupils so dilated?"

"That'd be the X."

"Where'd you get X?"

"Jesse, where else? We went to a rave. I know it's not mandatory but it's hard to drink liquor because it's next to impossible to stay hydrated as it is, let alone adding the effects of alcohol on top of it. So we took X instead."

"I shoulda known."

"Are we still gonna talk about my plans for the rest of the evening, or are you somehow mad at me for taking drugs?"

"I'm contemplating the answer to that."

She came up on her knees at the edge of the bed. "You're wearing entirely too much clothing for effective thinking." She started to raise his undershirt toward his shoulders, running her hands over his stomach and chest as she did so.

"I can't think when you do that."

"Good. Don't think. Just feel." At her insistence his undershirt came off over his head and landed somewhere out of his line of vision on the floor.

"Isn't this whole coercion thing supposed to be my line?"

"Whatever, how did you put it, ends the night with you inside me?"

He fell on her with a growl. He started to devour her mouth, taking the little moaning cries she was making into himself. "I believe that somewhere in this deal you were supposed to tell me what it was you wanted me to do," he murmured against her lips.

"Just don't stop doing anything you're doing already."

"That's a copout," he told her as his hands wandered.

"That works," she said in a voice made breathless from her wanting.

He abruptly stood back from her. "I need direction here. You gotta tell me what you want me to do."

"This could be a long night," she answered on a sigh.

"You got no where to be tomorrow, so who cares?" He shrugged.

"Well, for starters then, I want you to come over here." She watched as he obeyed her request. When she looked at his muscled chest and equally heavily muscled and tattooed arms she felt a rush of desire that left her weak. She was glad she was only kneeling on a bed and not standing because she knew she would have fallen down. She reached her hand out and trailed it down his chest. "What if I just want _you_? Is that detailed enough for you?" she asked, her eyes slowly traveling up to meet his.

"God yes," he growled, before leaning down to kiss her deeply again. And he didn't stop until he collapsed some time later with a satisfied sigh.

After giving each of them a moment to regain some semblance of normal breathing he rolled off her supine body with a groan. "If we keep doin' this like this every night I'll be dead by the time I'm twenty three. I'll be happy, but I'll be dead."

She giggled tiredly. "Guess it's a good thing for both of us that I'm goin' home in less than two weeks."

Rather than thrash about in his head for an answer that wouldn't come off flip or piss her off by reminding her that he wasn't exactly upset she wasn't going to be around for the long haul, he bodily picked her up and flipped her over before setting her back down on top of himself. He pulled her down with a hand on the back of her head and kissed her. He meant it to be one hard kiss, but as always, when she met him half way and kissed him back with equal intensity one kiss became several minutes of kissing as hands wandered. When he started to get a little too interested was when he forced himself to release her mouth. She was too tired, and likely to realize she was a hundred times more tired than she even thought, once she was fully down off her high, for them to have another go at it. Not to mention the fact he had to be up for work in less than two hours.

After a moment of lying bonelessly on top of Vince, Tempest slid sideways so that she was half on the bed and half on top of him. She settled into a place where her legs were tangled with his, her head was on his shoulder and her arm was draped across him. The emotions of the hour previous crashed into her as she lay there. She was glad the tears leaked silently out of her eyes as she recalled the extreme sensations and emotions she had experienced, both before coming home and in Vince's bed. She convinced herself he'd never know she'd been moved to tears. She figured she knew without being told it would freak him out.

Contrary to her thoughts, Vince was quite able to feel the skin of his shoulder becoming soaked with moisture. He was also quite sure she wasn't drooling all over him with her mouth closed. He brought one hand up to her face and brushed at the wet trail across her cheek with his thumb. "What gives little one?"

"I'm just being silly. Go to sleep," she muttered, unhappy that another living soul had seen her shed tears.

"You're sure you're ok?"

"I'm just happy and something caused me to become over stimulated tonight," she said as she found it within herself to tease, hoping to throw him, turn his mind away from any fears her action might have caused.

"I aim to please."

"Don't worry, you had good aim."

"It's late Trouble, get some sleep." She obeyed and he followed her example, falling into the sleep of the justifiably exhausted.


	6. Of Sleeping In and Broken Locks

AN: This chapter is rated M for drug use and the implication of adult topics. Please accept my warning to look elsewhere for reading material if these topics will bother you. To answer some asked questions, I don't know when Catalyst will be finished. The last chapter is going to be hella long, for one thing. To be honest I haven't done much more than brainstorm it yet. It's spring and I feel young and carefree and happy and I wanted to write something frivolous and fun. This is the result. This is a hundred and twenty thousand words long at this point, here on my HDD, and it's only been about three weeks I've been writing it. I had to do something fun for myself and this is it. Catalyst will be finished, but I really want the ending to resonate, so I'm not going to force it. When I go back and think about the comment about the character being autobiographical and to be careful what I let people presume…How so? She's not really autobiographical anyway. She's just sorta loosely based off me. It seemed like she'd fit in pretty good if she was a mechanic and a street racer and if I use my own looks in terms of hair and dress at least I don't have to have an imagination. A lot of how she reacts and talks is how I react and talk, but she's not supposed to be me. Just inspired by me, and I'd love to see a person really named Tempest. I think it's a hella cool name. Of course, I'm biased. ;) If you're still with me, enjoy, and please feel free to leave a review.

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Six – **Of Sleeping In and Broken Locks**

Dom looked at Leon over the breakfast table the next morning. "Where is everyone else from the dungeon?" Dom used their pet name for the basement.

"Still asleep."

"It's Monday. Why are they still asleep for?"

"Because Jesse and Tempest went out to a huge rave last night. I have no doubt they made it home around five or six, no doubt still drunk or worse when they rolled in."

"Ok, that explains about Jesse. Where's V?"

"Bed," Leon answered.

"Well, go wake him up. We're not all on vacation. He's supposed to come to work with us until Jesse starts back."

"I ain't wakin' him up." Leon shook his head. No way was he walking into Vince's room when he wasn't alone in there.

"I'll do it than. Shit, I know he's got a temper but he ain't gonna kill any of his own friends."

"I'd let it go this time dawg," Leon said as he attempted to warn Dom off his plan.

Dom just shook his head and started down the stairs. Letty looked at Leon. "He's got Jesse's cousin in his bedroom doesn't he?"

Leon's head snapped up from where he had been contemplating his breakfast. "How'd you know?"

"I came downstairs this morning around six to get a drink and I heard something strange from down there. I started down the stairs and then I realized what the sounds were," Letty smirked. "And I realized whose voices I was hearing. They're not exactly tame when they go at it, are they?"

"Not when they fight, and not when they, well," Leon left the rest of his statement up to her imagination.

Dom stomped back up the stairs. "I guess V's gettin' up when he wants today."

"Why? He yell at you that bad?" Letty asked, feigning ignorance.

"When I walked into the room and he wasn't alone and him and the person he wasn't alone with didn't have anything on under the sheets I didn't stick around to wait for him to wake up." He turned to Leon. "Didn't you tell me that they fought yesterday and didn't say two words to each other after about two pm?"

"Yeah, but I guess things changed."

"That'd be one way to put it. Let's get a move on. We're short Jesse as it is."

They all headed to the garage and Mia headed for her café, leaving the house in silence.

Vince woke up at around ten o'clock. He figured he better get up and go to the garage before Dom disowned him for life. He didn't work at the garage as a rule, but when Dom had asked him if he would while Jesse took some time off he'd said yes. Then he blew off Dom to sleep in with the very reason they were giving Jesse time off. He got dressed before turning back to his bed. He figured he'd just leave her to sleep a while longer. Once he had left her alone in the bed she'd stretched out on her stomach in a sprawl which took up the better part of his double bed. Her movement must have caused the blankets to move as they were now tangled around her waist, revealing the line of small bumps which made up her spine and the angles of her shoulder blades, all awash in her tumbled hair, still silky straight from whatever she'd done the day before to remove the riotous curls. He missed those curls, he mused with a frown. Their untamed nature suited her way more than the same sleek style as so many other people sported.

He untangled her and pulled the blankets up to her neck. He somehow knew if someone walked in, like if Jesse came looking for her, she wouldn't want him to know how naked she was. He didn't want to look too closely at what the thoughts of Dom or Leon walking in on her looking like she did made him feel. He just knew he didn't want to share her like that with either of them. He left the room and headed up the stairs. He was momentarily tempted to wake her up and ask her to make him breakfast, but figured he'd slip by the café and get Mia to feed him before he went to Dom's. Besides, he had no idea if she could even cook. She thought that fruit constituted a meal, after all. Thoughts of her probable outrage over being asked to make him breakfast, just assuming she could cook simply because she was female made him grin. She'd be supremely pissed off. But even that would be ok because she'd look so damn fine while she ranted.

He parked out front of their little lunch counter and walked in. "How you doin', Mia?"

"Fine. What are you doing here?"

He shook his head. She was always so short with him. "Woke up too late to get food at home. I thought I'd grab somethin' here before I go find out what's up at the shop."

"What's going on at the shop is Dom's likely to rip you a new one."

"For what?"

"You said you'd get up and go help them today."

"I did get up and I will go help them. Do you expect me to go hungry?"

"If you weren't working up an appetite at night doing things you shouldn't be doing you'd be able to get up in the morning at the appropriate hour and eat breakfast with your family." She looked at the love bites all over both sides of his neck and shook her head.

"You almost sound jealous," he said with a smirk.

"Not in this lifetime." She watched as a scowl replaced his smirk. "If I thought you really liked that girl I'd be over the moon happy for you. But since I think you're just using her while it's convenient I'm disgusted with you and it's going to take a long time before it goes away."

"Hey! I do really like her. She's great. And nothin' happened between me'n her that she didn't want, too."

"So what? Did you point blank tell her that you never saw one girl two nights in a row before and that you only saw her two nights in a row because she's staying in our house? You could find her great and like her as a friend like the rest of us and not start sleeping with her too!"

"I'm not gonna talk about this any more, least of all with you. You don't understand."

"I understand just fine. You're a pig who'll use any woman who'll have you. What's not to understand?"

"Fuck this. I'm goin for a drive. If Dom comes lookin' for me, tell him you don't know where I went when your bitchy attitude set me off, ok?"

"You never could handle being told the truth if it wasn't what you wanted to hear V," Mia called after his retreating back.

He held his hand over his shoulder with his middle finger raised. She let him leave with a sigh. She'd done her best to put an idea into his head that what he was doing wasn't right. Now it was up to him to see what he did with it.

After tearing around aimlessly for an hour Vince headed home. He wasn't in the mood to put up with the rest of his team and figured he'd go home and hole up somewhere so he didn't have to. He parked the car at the curb and noted the only other car home was the lightning painted Skyline. So either Tempest was still there, or she'd left with Jesse.

He banged into the house, down the stairs and into his room. He paused in the door. Tempest was still in his bed, wearing her underwear from the night before and one of his undershirts, which swam on her. She had the lamp on and was curled up in all his pillows against the headboard of his bed, her legs crossed feet to thighs, and with her nose buried in a book. When she noticed him she tried to hide the book under the pillows, like she didn't want him to know she was reading.

"If you're awake, why are you still in bed and not dressed," he growled as he walked fully into the room.

"Dunno. I really didn't feel good when I woke up and I still don't." She looked up at him and realized he was ripping for a fight. She could tell by his stiff posture and the sneer on his face. While she'd normally oblige him _and _ enjoy dancing verbal circles around him, she just didn't have it in her to cope with him in a mood. She was feeling too down and depressed to fight back. She'd just end up letting him make her cry and she wouldn't allow that to happen. She unfolded herself and got up, pulling her book out from under the pillow as she went. "I'll leave you, since you seem like you're looking to be alone."

"What'd ya know? You're not as dumb as you look."

She went out the door without a word, and closed it behind her. She pulled on a pair of yoga pants and pulled off Vince's shirt before looking in her bag for something else to wear.

When she let his insult slide without having anything to say about it, some of his anger dissipated. She was seriously not ok if she had let that one go. When he thought about it, her face had been quite pale and her eyes red rimmed. He knew he'd only said what he had hoping to goad her into a fight that would let him relieve some of his stress. He opened his door and went to step out of his room to go and find her. He found she hadn't gotten far. She was standing in the living room with her back to him, some sort of wide leg pants of a soft material sitting around her hips and nothing on yet up top. She finally decided on a sports top and pulled it on. She then lay down on the couch, facing the back of it and pulled a blanket over her body. He leaned on his door frame and watched her for a moment. He wished he hadn't stuck around to watch her at all when her knees came up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them before her shoulders started to shake.

She was crying. There was nothing worse for a man to deal with than a crying female. He turned to go back into his room. She'd sort herself out if he left her alone long enough, he told himself. Too bad he didn't get his door closed fast enough to miss her pulling the pillow out from under her head and into her arms before burying her face into it to muffle the sounds of crying she was now making, sobbing brokenly like nothing would ever be right with her again. _Great! _He couldn't just walk away and leave her alone and that miserable. Not if he didn't want to call himself an asshole for the rest of the day.

She really didn't know what had come over her, but she was just so down. She was often down the day after she took X, but not this down. It was horrible. She hated to cry but everything just looked so bleak that she couldn't help herself. She knew it was all in her head and that it would pass, but until it did she was just going to have to ride it out. Vince was wrong, she was every bit as dumb as she looked to get into something she had known would make her feel like shit after the euphoria was gone. She sniffled in a very unladylike fashion and thanked god for the darkness she was in which suited her mood so well and the fact she was alone and didn't have to worry about anyone seeing her so broken down.

"What's with the waterworks, Trouble?"

She felt the couch dip at her back under his weight as he sat down in the hollow at the small of her back. She didn't answer him or acknowledge him in any other way. She was too embarrassed about her conduct to dare. She never let anyone see her cry. Not since she was about six years old and learned that to the men in the world, tears were a weakness. Her tears were a weakness she didn't often indulge in, let alone allow anyone to know about.

"Something I did?" he probed.

She shook her head no.

"You sure?" he asked before rubbing her back in slow circles, hoping to calm her down. If nothing was wrong, why was she still sobbing? "'Cause you really don't seem like nothing's wrong with you."

"I'm just not feeling good," she said. It came out in a shuddering, watery tone that made him wince.

"Why aren't you feeling good?"

She shrugged. "Sometimes after I party at a rave I don't feel very well the next day. It's worse today for some reason than I ever remember it."

"Anything I can do?"

She again didn't answer with more than a side to side shake of her head.

"You sure?"

"Yeah," she answered. Her voice was barely audible.

"You wanna be alone?"

"Yeah."

Though she answered yes, he was fairly sure the real answer was no, she was just worried about taking more of his bad attitude. He pulled the blanket off her and scooped her up off the couch. "Good, so do I. We'll go be alone together. Get your book." He waited until she leaned down and did as he asked before he carried her into his room and lay down with her across his lap, leaning against his chest with her head under his chin. "You read and I'll brood, ok?"

It forced a small smile to her lips. "Ok." She read for about half an hour, feeling his eyes on her the whole time. "So," she asked, putting her book down across her thigh. "What are you brooding about while you stare at me?"

"Gettin' attitude from Mia."

"About what?"

He realized he really couldn't answer that one in present company unless he wanted to ruin the pleasant solitude of their time together with a discussion about what the reality of their relationship was. "Um, about fact that I was supposed to get up and go to the garage today but I didn't get up in time to get breakfast. I went to the café to get something to eat before I caught up with the guys and she got pissed at me for expecting her to feed me after she already made breakfast for everyone else and after I was late for work."

"So why aren't you at the garage now?"

"I got pissed at her so I just came home. I knew I wasn't going to be fit company to be around other people."

"Sorry I got in your way."

"Don't be. I'm the one who shot my mouth off."

"Yeah, but I'm getting used to that when it comes to you and your big mouth," she said. A ghost of a smile crossed her face.

"You're no slouch in the big mouth department either, Trouble."

"But I always knew that and freely admitted it. You, on the other hand, tried to pretend you were just tough and cool."

He laughed. He couldn't help it. "You get away with murder around me Trouble, and I don't know why I allow it."

"Because you live in eternal hope of getting in my pants again?"

"Yeah, there's some truth to that, I guess," he chuckled. There was more to it, but he wasn't going there with her. He sure wasn't going to tell her how much he liked it when her anger brought out the jade flecks in her eyes, or the way her passion for arguing with him reminded him of her passion doing other things with him. "So, we gonna lay here all afternoon with me watching you read, or is there some other activity I could talk you into participating in with me?"

"Is this other activity you have in mind one we get to go out in public to do, or is it one that involves us with a lock on the door and a lot less clothing?"

"Well, at first it was one that involved going out in public, but now you put the other idea in my head."

"It's only one. We have time to do the latter and be gone to do the former before the team gets home."

He threw back his head and laughed. "I like how you think."

"I'm not sure you think enough for me to like how you do it, but I sure do like how you do other things," she smirked up at him tauntingly.

"Oh, you do, huh?"

"Yeah. I guess it's a good thing that you're useful in some way."

He took her book from her and set it on the night stand before hooking his hand under her knee and lifting her leg over his head, before setting it down. Now she was sitting in his lap, facing him with one of her feet beside each of his hips. His hands tangled in her hair, his mouth found hers, and all thoughts he had of being annoyed at anything flew right out of his head.

As she lay curled against the expanse of his chest some time later, she checked the time on the bedside clock. She marvelled at the amount of time which passed like a blur when they were alone together. She sighed, unsettled still.

"You ok?"

"You gonna ask me if I'm ok every time I sigh for the rest of my life?" she teased.

"No. But I am gonna tell you one thing."

"And what's that?"

"You really need a shower."

She looked up into his laughing blue eyes in outrage. "You need one worse." She started to untangle her limbs from his. "But because you were so rude, I'm going first."

"No you ain't. It's my bathroom so I get to go first."

"I'm the guest so you're obligated to let me go first."

"I'm not that gentlemanly."

"I'm just gonna beat you into the room and lock you out then." She got up and opened the door a crack, peaking around for company. Not spotting any she threw the door open wide and dashed to her bag, grabbing two towels and the bag with her shampoo and conditioner. She glanced at the open door of Vince's room and saw he was still in bed. She darted into the bathroom and locked the door.

He got up leisurely, stretched hugely and grabbed a towel out of his closet. He wrapped it around his waist, still chuckling to himself about Tempest both running through the house naked and about her thinking she could lock him out of the bathroom. Little did she know, the lock didn't really work and hadn't since the time Jesse had passed out in the bathroom and Leon had to break the door down to get in. He opened the door easily despite the lock and hung his towel over the back of the door knob.


	7. Of Photographic Memories and Doing Lunch

**AN:** It's likely to be obvious that a great portion of this chapter is edited for content to comply with the rules of the site. I normally would just say screw it and post what I want to anyway, but I guess I really don't agree with NC-17 content falling into the hands of a thirteen year old kid. I'd also rather not deal with the whole reviews with threats and emails telling me my account will be locked for two weeks or whatever. So the explicit version stays on the adults only board and the toned down version gets the M rating here. Again, this update pushes the boundaries of M, so find yourself duly warned to find something else to read if this is likely to offend you. Anyone so inclined can always join the board and read it there, provided you meet all the eligibility requirements. Despite the fact that this story doesn't seem to have the interest of very many, fear not! I shall persevere. The story will find completion. On with the next chapter of…

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Seven – **Of Photographic Memories and Doing Lunch**

He pushed the shower curtain out of the way at the rear of the shower and stepped in. She had her eyes closed under the hot spray and had yet to realize she was no longer alone. He slid right up behind her before reaching around in front of her and splaying a hand flat on her stomach and lowering his face to the side of her neck. "I thought we could save some water, do our part for the environment."

She squealed in shock before leaning back into him weakly. "How in the seven hells did you get in here?"

"Lock don't work. It's broken."

"Thanks for telling me that when you showed me around the place! What if Leon or Jesse had walked in on me? I get dressed in here sometimes."

"We never close the door unless it's occupied. So if the door's closed, no one will come in."

"The door _was_ closed and you came in."

"Yeah, but I knew you were in here and wanted in too. I didn't want to wait for you to finish up to have my shower. I told you I was goin' first. It's not my fault you didn't listen."

"I beat you in here fair and square."

"Yeah, now I'm about to make it worth your while to let me stay."

"How so?" she questioned, her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

He didn't answer right away, but rather repositioned her stance and showed her just how he could make her glad for his presence in her shower. A little while later she turned to lean against the wall of the shower under the water fall. She looked at Vince where he stood and her eyes widened. He grinned. "I'm not done with you yet."

"You sure are full of surprises, aren't you?" she asked, her voice breathless and tinged with indulgent laughter.

Rather than answer her he leaned down and captured her mouth. She pressed herself against him happily and kissed him back eagerly. By the time she became aware of her location again her fingers and toes were wrinkled prunes. She was still leaned against him, using her hold around his neck to hold herself upright.

"Now I don't know if I have energy to even wash my hair, let alone go outside and pretend I'm not exhausted."

"You must be hungry, I know I am."

"You're always hungry. Jesse told me so."

"I'm always hungry for something. You got a fifty fifty chance of guessing which I'm hungry for at any given time."

She allowed herself another smile at his glib words before grabbing her shampoo and washing her hair. She was lucky that more strength returned to her arms every minute that she didn't feel some part of Vince touching her. Once she had the conditioner rinsed out he picked her up and set her behind him. "My turn," he explained at her raised brow.

She picked up her body wash and poof with a shrug. She didn't need to be under the water to use soap. She started to scrub her body, her eyes closed in a happy satisfaction which she had never known could be achieved by sex in the shower. _Twice_, she reminded herself and felt her cheeks heat softly as the memories rushed back.

He watched her rub the round, lathered poof all over her body and wished for two things. One, that he was that poof, and two, that she would rub it all over his skin the way she was her own. But that thought brought with it more, and in the more he found thoughts he knew would lead to him keeping her in the shower another half hour, at least, and they were already starting to run out of hot water. He allowed her to get between him and the water again to rinse her body. She got out of the tub while he washed himself and when he got out she was wrapped in a big fluffy white towel with a logo of some sort on it. He unwrapped her to take a look.

"Magic Mountain?"

"It's a water theme park a few hours away from where I live. Me and the girls go over in the summer to play. See what kind of scenery we can see."

"Does it live up to what you've been seeing in California?"

"No, some of those surfer guys at the beach were pretty hot," she answered with a sly smirk.

"Fine, maybe you can find one of them to make you scream like I do then," he answered, thinking she was serious.

She blushed at his reminder of how often he did make her cry out audibly. "Don't get your panties in a twist Slick. I was just picking at you."

"I know that, I was just picking on you," he answered, trying to cover up for his defensiveness.

"Good. Where you takin' me?"

"Who says I'm takin' you anywhere?"

"You said. You said after we were done," she trailed off for a moment, "well, done in your room we'd go out in public and do something out of the house."

"I guess I did. As long as it starts with eating it doesn't matter what we do."

"You have to decide! I don't know where anything is around here or what there is to do."

"I'll take care of you Trouble. Just do somethin' with your hair. You can't wear the towel outta the house."

"I know how to take a shower," she said, rolling her eyes.

"Do you ever."

"I never did anything like that before. Just another way you're corrupting me, I guess."

"If that's corrupting you, I guess I really like corruption."

"I can't say I minded either. But now I'm ready to be out of the house for awhile. Besides that, where's Jesse?" If the answer was still in his room, she knew she'd die of embarrassment.

"Left you a note upstairs that said because he was already up and knew you'd sleep until suppertime after a rave if you followed your usual pattern he decided to go to the garage instead of hanging around here all day, waiting for you to wake up."

"Oh, ok." She took the towel out of her hair and grabbed the brush out of her cosmetics bag. She started to run it through her hair. Before too long it was done. She went to open the bathroom door.

"Better let me go first in case someone's home. If you don't hear from me, no one is and I'll move your stuff into my room so you can get dressed, ok?"

"Ok." She watched him strut out of the room, nothing on but a towel slung low around his narrow hips. She sighed again. He was such a fine specimen of a man. It was too bad he was willing to give her everything but his heart. That he had locked up, waiting for Mia to realize she wanted it. Knowing women the way she did, given that she was one, Tempest didn't see that day ever coming. And since she was only going to be around for another week and a half, she wondered if some other girl would take his attention in the years to come. Would his dream of a relationship with the dark girl fade to black and allow his attention to drift to some other girl in his life at the time? Or was he destined to live his whole life taking affection where he could get it but keeping his own affections to himself, forever thinking the only woman deserving of them would 'come around'? The questions she was asking herself saddened her.

She knew a little about where he was coming from. There had been a guy once that she had liked. He had liked her as a friend, and despite her attempts to make what was between them more, he had never taken the bait. It was clear he knew what she was wanting, what she was offering, but he never took her up on it. He just didn't see her that way. And she knew from first hand experience that the person who wasn't interested rarely changed their mind in the situation. Either you did, or it changed the friendship until you drifted apart. She was saddened to think that would be the fate of the strange man she was so intrigued by. But she knew by instinct that if he thought she was interested in more than the easy friendship they had, and the all out verbal warfare tinged by the sexual desire neither could or wanted to deny, he would bolt and he would bolt hard. With a shrug she gave up her line of thinking and wandered into his room. "You decide where we're goin' yet?"

"Food. What kind do you like? Other than fruit for breakfast."

"I'm not really fussy. I can find something I like almost everywhere I go."

"Good. I'll pick. Get some gear on. I can't be expected to please you three times in one afternoon and not get fed for my trouble."

"We could just cook something in the house and come back down here. I should be able to find some things to make that I can feed you." She walked up to him and dropped the towel still wrapped around her before she leaned into his fully clothed body and slid her arms up around his neck.

The difficulty he had in turning her down was obvious by the look on his face. He didn't know why he couldn't get enough of her, but as soon as they were done was soon enough to start again as far as he was concerned. But if they stuck around the house too much longer they were going to be answering some irate and pointed questions. "We better take a rain check Trouble. The rest of the team will be home soon and I don't want to answer twenty questions about what I was doing this afternoon instead of working."

"I'd almost like to fill Dom in with a play by play, just to watch his face turn that interesting shade of deep red it does. But I really don't want to traumatise Jess for the rest of his life with all the gory details."

"To say nothing of what it would likely do to Leon, who could have moved on you first and could be the one who just had one of the hottest afternoons of his life." He grinned in a very satisfied matter.

"Leon is practically like a brother to Jesse, which means Leon is practically like a cousin to me. That's just gross." She turned away and walked over to her bag and started to get dressed. When she was done she piled her hair on top of her head and wrapped an elastic around it. "I'm ready."

He reached out and pulled the elastic out of her hair. "No, now you're ready."

"My flippin' hair will just annoy me all day if it's not tied up."

He tangled his hand in it before using his grip on it to tip her head back and kiss the point where her pulse beat at the base of her throat. "I like it down."

"I guess it can stay down, this once." She was angry at herself for bowing to his chauvinist view that a woman should have long, unbound, flowing hair, but she still couldn't help the desire to please him.

"Good. Let's go find some grub."

"That sounds attractive. We goin' to Burger King or McDonalds?"

"Likely neither," he answered, his confusion evident. "What gave you that idea?"

"When a man calls food 'grub' to a woman she immediately thinks hamburger joint."

"Only if you want to go to a hamburger joint. But I normally prefer Fat Burger to Burger King."

"If you think I will ever darken the door of a place called 'Fat Burger' you may kindly thing again."

"I'll take you someplace nicer if you just shut up and get dressed."

"I am dressed Slick. You'd think after seeing so much of my skin you'd know when it wasn't on display."

"I made a mental photograph. I can undress you with my mind at will. When I look at you, you're naked. All the time."

"I'll keep that in mind when I catch you staring at me in the future."

"Ok, good. Let's go," he whined.

"I'm ready already. Let's go before you whine yourself into a need for a big round of brie."

He pushed her ahead of him out the door, rather than answer. He pushed her up the stairs first as well and out the back door. He stopped beside his car and waited for her to get in. His face took on a dark cast when she shook her head no.

"What'd ya mean, no?"

"I told Jesse after the last time that I wouldn't ever ride in your car again and I meant it."

"How else are we gonna get around?"

"I have a car. Just let me drive."

"I don't want to be feeding you directions all afternoon."

She sighed. It did make more sense to take his car so he could drive. She reached for the passenger side door handle. She watched as he started to smile, sensing his victory. Her hand froze three quarters of the way toward the handle. "You have to make me a promise first."

"What?" he asked in exasperation. He was so hungry he thought he could eat his own cooking, and that was saying something.

"You gotta promise me you won't yell at me in the car this time."

"Fine, I promise I won't yell at you in the car."

"I don't like the inflection you put on that promise."

"Aw, for cryin' out loud. I made my promise. Let's go already. Dom and company will be back before we get away at this rate."

She got in the car. She figured if he pissed her off she could always bail on him and call Jesse to come and get her. She put her seat belt on before toying with the frayed edge around one of the tears in her jeans.

"Any other place on earth you have no fear of me in your heart or soul and you pretty much stand alone in that department. In the car, because we had one fight _beside_ the car, you're so nervous you're picking at your clothes and fidgeting."

Oh, that was where he was wrong. She had a healthy dose of fear of him in both her heart and soul. That he could own one and break the other, all in the twelve or thirteen short days before she left L.A. She was doing her damnedest to remind herself at least twice a day that she couldn't keep him, just like a cute puppy that followed you home but looked like a German Shepard and you lived in a tiny apartment. It just wasn't doable. The cute puppy would grow up into what could be a dangerous dog when caged in your tiny life. He would become aggressive and unhappy and you would become attached and heartbroken when you finally had to give him away. "I'm not nervously fidgeting or scared of you. I'm just hungry and bored. Where's this meal you were on about?"

Vince signalled before executing a left. He then turned right and right again before parking the car behind a very modest looking building. "This is it," he said as he set the parking brake.


	8. Of Zippers and Beginner's Luck

**AN: Wow, a chapter I didn't have to edit! Ok, I'm not sure that anyone waiting for the focus to shift to 'the team' is ever going to be pleased. There's a lot of bits and pieces of them. There's a lot of Jesse and Leon, and of course a lot of Vince. There'll be some Letty and Mia, and not too much Dominic. The main point is setting up the relationship between Tempest and Jesse, as well as the relationships between the boys on the team. Anyway, it'll all become clear once I get all of 'book' one up and get started on book two. I'm going to write all of her time in California, and then write book two, which is what comes after. I'm not going to reveal my plans for book two though. Why would you keep reading if I did that? Needless to say, the summary of this, book one, is going to be prophetic. So, enjoy the story and please review! **

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Eight – **Of Zippers and Beginner's Luck**

"Where are we?"

"I know the people here. Come on, the sooner we get in the sooner we get to eat."

"You're vouching for the place being clean and safe to eat at? It don't look like much."

"I know it don't. But it is. When you gonna learn to trust me?"

"I do. I'm just not great around new restaurants." She watched Vince get out of the car, sighing to himself about her perverseness. She followed him to the sidewalk, hitching up her pants as she walked around the rear of the car to meet him on the driver's side. He surprised her by hooking an arm around her shoulders for the walk around the building.

"You'll like it here."

She figured out what he meant when they pushed through the door. "Italian. I shoulda known from all the fricken pasta and sauce in Mia's cupboards you guys eat a lot of Italian."

"Mia and Dom are Italian, it's what they know. And since Mia does all the cooking—and if you ever watched any of the rest of us but Dominic try, you'd be thankful—it only stands to reason she's gonna cook what she knows. What about you? What do you cook when you cook?"

"I make a mean pot roast," she answered. "And a mean pot of chicken soup." She caught the look he was giving her over her pedestrian choices of dishes to tell him about. "I can cook. You give me a recipe and I can make it. But I don't make a lot of time for cooking or for food. I'm too busy. I end up drinking a lot of protein shakes."

"You're a gym rat, that hard core?"

"Back home I go every day but Sunday."

"Why?"

"To look good in a bikini of course," she grinned and hoped it threw him off any other reasons.

"Do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Look good in a bikini?"

"You'd know if you came to the beach with us yesterday instead of implying I was up to something I shouldn't have been up to with Leon."

Vince opened the door and held himself out of the way, letting her precede him into the interior of the establishment. "I'm not big on the beach."

"Why the fuck not? You live in California. _Southern _California. I'd live on the beach year round if I could. It's bad enough it's only fit to go to the beach about four months of the year where I'm from."

"Why can't you go the other eight?"

"Because there's snow on the sand and ice in the water. If you wanna come stay wit' me in December and hit the beach, you can feel free. I'll be the chick waiting for you at home in the flannel PJs with Coltrane on my stereo, a bottle of wine at my elbow and a good book in my hands with a good dog on my cold feet while the snow falls and the wind howls outside, a'ight?"

She painted the picture so well with her words he could practically hear the jazz and taste the wine. He almost wanted that winter night. Not just that night, but that night with her. He'd come in from doing something outside. No doubt she'd make him do the shovelling due to his 'big man' attitude. She'd be waiting with a woolly blanket on a cozy couch, two wine glasses on the table, the stereo already playing softly. She might have fallen asleep while she waited for him to come back. He'd wake her with his cold hands against her cheeks. Watch her wake up slowly, smile up at him. Open her arms to take him into them. He'd lean down, they'd kiss. The dog would be banished off her feet because he would shortly need to be able to pull those flannel PJs off over them. He was getting in over his head. He shook off those thoughts. "So, that sounds almost ok. What's the downside?"

"In winter there is no Skyline. It ceases to exist from December first until May thirty first. The only way I can put it away and not drive it is to pretend it's gone. It's the same with my RX-7. My Altima has studded snow tires and gets oil undercoated every year and is rusting out anyway. I, the queen of speeding, have to slow it down. Tow trucks happen, batteries die, cars crash, schools get closed. We shovel, a lot." She grinned up at him. "The only things I like about winter are long evenings with nothing better to do than stay inside and keep warm—well, I like those when I'm attached to someone to keep warm with at any rate—and snowboarding and skiing."

"This dog that keeps your feet warm, what kind is it?"

"_He_ is a Border Collie."

"Who's got him now?"

"My mom. You like dogs?"

"Like dogs fine. Never had time or a place for one though."

"Yeah, they're a lot of work. Mom helps out a lot with mine. I wouldn't take very good care of him if she didn't, I have to admit. He's pretty lazy but not as lazy as he'd have to be if mom didn't walk him when she walked her own dog."

"I woulda taken you for liking big dogs."

"I do. I was just a kid when I got Sam. He's my first dog, first one in the paper I went to look at. He ran right up to me with this crazy dog look on his face, jumped up on his hind legs, wrapped his front legs around my waist and just smiled this great doggie smile at me. And he's not small. He weighs about fifty five pounds, all of it stubborn, ignorant male. We get along great. He's got this devious streak in him a mile wide." She grinned. "He'd fuck me over for something he wanted that I wouldn't give him, but then he'd think better of it, after the fact. He's a shoot first, ask later kinda dog."

"Kinda like his owner." Vince grinned back.

"He's mommy's boy."

"Mommy?"

"I tell my mom I'll never be giving her grandkids so she better be content with spoiling the granddog."

The hostess spotted them before he could ask the follow-up question he clearly wanted to ask. "Vincent!" the older Italian woman exclaimed.

Vince addressed her by name and they were shown to a nice table, out of the way but with a window view. Tempest felt the woman's speculative look as she sat herself down. "Dovreste estrarre la sedia per la signora graziosa!" she said to Vince in rapid-fire Italian, admonishing him for not helping his female companion into her chair.

"Sono spiacente," he answered, offering his apology, knowing full well that Tempest understood at worst a bit of what was said and at best all of it.

"Sono addestramento tranquillo lui in queste cose," Tempest told the Italian woman, grinning as she told the older lady she wasn't done training Vince in the ways of a gentlemen just yet. She was rewarded for her efforts when the woman, who she was fast coming to realize must be the wife of the owner, laughed out loud.

"Is good, Signora. That is good." She left them with menus.

"Not done training me yet, huh?"

"I guess not. You didn't know enough to pull out my chair when the lady who watches you for such things was around. You need work, V."

"Just pick what you're gonna eat so we can order when she comes back."

"Alright. Shit! You must have one hell of a metabolism."

"What makes you say that?"

"When you get hungry you get irritable. Since you're always irritable you must always be hungry."

"There are definitely times when you make sure I'm not irritable. I mean, getting out of the shower this afternoon I was _almost_ mellow." He looked at her with one eyebrow raised.

She was ashamed of herself for the blush she felt redden her cheeks. "If that's what it takes to make you mellow, I don't foresee you getting to be mellow too often. I'd like to live to see twenty, thanks."

"Are you gonna send me to bed without my supper tonight?" The look on his face made it clear what he was implying had nothing to do with the kind of food found in Mia's kitchen.

"I don't know. Depends on how the rest of this afternoon goes."

"I guess we'll see. What are you having?"

"Spaghetti and meatballs. You?"

"That's it? You're in a real Italian restaurant and you want spaghetti and meatballs?"

"I like spaghetti and meatballs. What's wrong with it?"

"You could pick something off the adult menu. Not something you ate out of a can when you were in grade school."

"Hey, I'll have you know that Strand Man was pretty cool!"

"He was on a can of junkie garbage you ate when you were ten."

"Will it make you happier if I start with a caeser salad?"

"And then have tortellini rose instead of spaghetti."

"Ok, fine. You order for me and I'll eat what I get, ok?"

"She'll like that. It'll look like you've taught me some form of gentlemanly behaviour in the short time we've been sitting here."

Tempest smiled. "Maybe I did."

"Maybe." The look on his face clearly showed he didn't think so, and if he did, he wouldn't be pleased about it. At all.

The lady, who Tempest later came to find out was a distant cousin of Mia and Dominic and had known them and Vince since they were small children, returned, looked pleased to allow Vince to order for both of them and returned a short time later with their food. Tempest started to eat, taking small bites and working to keep her different foods from mixing as she always did. She watched as Vince demolished the food placed in front of him. He was done long before she was, and sat watching her for the rest of the time it took her to get to the point where she couldn't eat anymore. He then finished what she hadn't. They sat a while after, letting dinner settle, before Vince stood up and started for the door.

"What about a check, a tip? Normal pre leaving the restaurant stuff."

"Don't worry about it."

She thought about fighting with him, caught a look at his face, and thought better of it. She still wasn't in the mood to really fight with him, and she could tell this issue could swiftly become one. He hollered good-bye to everyone as he held the door open for her to go out. She turned around to wave good-bye to the nice Italian lady before she stepped onto the sidewalk and pulled her shades out of her hair. It was sad to think it was the first and likely only time she'd ever meet the woman who'd made it ok for her to tease Vince mercilessly without him being able to tease back. "So now what?" she asked Vince, hoping to keep her mind occupied.

"Dunno. Any requests?"

"Roll me to the car. I'm stuffed."

"You didn't even finish your whole dinner," he accused, even as he crouched down in front of her, locking his hands under her ass when she climbed onto his back. He stood up and started toward his car, piggybacking her.

"It was like they thought they were feeding you twice. I can't eat like you. But I doubt very many people can."

"Ha ha. What do you want to do for the rest of the afternoon before we go home and face the music?"

"I didn't do anything wrong. You're the one who got up late, missed breakfast, pissed off Mia, blew off work. I was just reading, innocent as could be. Then I got sucked into an afternoon of sin by you, the ultimate corruptor of good girls everywhere."

"You're a good girl at some things, but innocent and good in general are two things I won't give you."

"I'm sweet and innocent."

"If you can sell me that, I'll buy that bridge you want to sell too."

She laughed. "Ok, ok. You got me. As to what I want to do while you're still on the lamb, I don't know. I don't know a thing about this place."

"Let's just drive around and see what we see then." Vince set her down beside the passenger side door of his car.

"Sure," she agreed with a shrug and got back in the car. They drove around for awhile before they drove past a carnival. "Let's go in there," she said as she pointed.

"Seriously?" he asked. It was clear he thought she had to be perpetrating a cruel joke against him.

"Yeah! Can we?"

"Why not?" he gave in. They were loud, noisy and often dirty, but why shouldn't they spend the rest of their afternoon in one? He figured her sarcasm was wearing off on him. Yet he couldn't deny her what she wanted just yet. The memory of her sobbing on the couch was still too fresh. He'd do almost anything not to have to deal with her tears again.

She somehow conned him into getting on several of the more wild rides with her. It wasn't that he didn't like the rides, or that they made him ill, he just hadn't been to a carnival in so long he'd forgotten that he actually didn't mind the adrenaline rush of being flung upside down on something called 'The Zipper'.

Once they were done with the rides, she challenged him to see who could win the bigger stuffed animal at the shooting games. She surprised him by winning. And he'd really tried.

"Which one do you want?" she asked him.

"You pick. I don't want a damn teddy bear."

"I won it so I get to give it to you. Which one?" She smirked up at him playfully. The guy running the booth snorted behind his hand. Vince sent him a nasty look that had his face sobering very quickly. "Fine, I'll pick." She did so, and Vince picked his slightly smaller winnings. They rode a few more rides and played a few more games before heading for home. It was going on seven before they pushed through the front door. "He's yours. I won him for you and I'll remind you that means I'm a better shot than you."

"Beginner's luck," he growled.

"Not a chance," Jesse broke in from the door of the living room. He'd gotten up off the couch when he'd heard Vince's car pull into the drive. He was relieved to find Tempest had been out with Vince, and that both of them had lived to tell of the day they'd had, hadn't killed each other. "Cuz here has been shooting competitively since she was thirteen."

"You didn't mention that when you challenged me." Vince looked down at Tempest, one eyebrow raised in question.

"I had a funny feeling you weren't exactly a novice yourself, and that you didn't learn what you know about accuracy on a firing range or perfect it in competitions."

"Ok, you got me. You still coulda mentioned you knew your way around a firearm."

"And take away the satisfaction of creaming you big time? Dream on. You're stuck with a gigantic stuffed turtle for my trouble."

"Well, you're taking this slightly less gigantic panda with you for mine."

"Where the fuck were you today?" Dom broke into the light hearted conversation the three had been having with his question growled from where he stood in the hallway leading to the kitchen. It was clearly addressed to Vince.

"Got pissed off early and decided not to risk killing you all," Vince answered with an indifferent shrug.

"But you simmered down enough to go buy stuffed animals?"

"Won them."

"Where?"

"At a carnival," Tempest finally broke in. "Sorry, it's all my fault, really. I was contemplating the state of the world and other morose topics this morning when V found me and he decided I couldn't be left alone when I was so distraught. So he spent the day trying to cheer me up. Rather heroic of him, really."

Jesse caught an undercurrent of tension running between Dom and Vince. "Say cuz, let's go rent some movies to watch tonight, ok?"

"Sure," she sensed something in Jesse's voice that made her give in to him without question. "Get your keys."

They headed out together and got in the Jetta. Tempest was sure that Vince had wanted to have something to say about them running off, but had decided to keep it to himself. "They gonna fight?"

Jesse seemed to think about that question. "I'd guess so. Dom likes order and he doesn't like it when people disregard the plan. Why did you and Vince spend the afternoon together anyway?"

"I was so down this morning. I never saw the like Jess. I mean, you know I can be kinda off for a day after a party, but nothing like this. I was curled up on the couch trying not to let anyone find out I was having a good cry but he musta heard me and took pity on me, hung out with me in the house for awhile before he decided he was going out to eat and offered to let me tag along. It wasn't really something planned. It just sorta happened."

Jesse nodded as he assimilated this information. "I gather Mia told him off about you this morning."

"How so?" _That explains a lot_. Tempest studied Jesse through narrowed eyes, waiting to hear his answer.

"She told him that it wasn't fair for him to be involved with you when you didn't know he was just using you because you were going home soon."

"That's not fair! I'm not being used." Tempest started to get indignant. "What, a woman can't decide if she wants to take a relationship for what's offered? Not every woman needs to have commitments and promises for the future! Who's she to say I can't be happy to take what's offered in the spirit it's offered in for as long as we both want what we want? Who's to say that all I want isn't what I'm getting."

"Calm down T. I told her you knew the score and didn't care and she still said that it makes Vince an asshole for being glad about it. She thinks your nice and doesn't think that you're going to end up being as ok with things as you think you are right now."

Since Mia's worry echoed some of her own thoughts from earlier she found it hard to totally fault Mia for thinking that way. But she was still an adult who didn't need Mia to protect her from her own decisions. "It's nice to know she cares. But it's still my life. The only problem I see is that I came down here to spend time with you and it feels like I've seen more of Vince."

"You didn't tell me to go to work today. If I'da known you'd wake up at lunch time not supper I wouldn't have."

"It was just that strange mood I got into Jess. I normally wouldn't have woken up much before now. Tomorrow, you make plans and we'll do whatever you want. Even if it's going to mean I have to get up at eight am."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"Sweet."


	9. Of Bruised Skin and Bruised Egos

AN: This is another one of those edited chapters. I think it's edited down to M. Hope so. Anyway, no I won't be emailing the chapters out to people from this site. Sorry, but unless I have personal knowledge of the fact your over eighteen, I'm just not gonna do it. If you're over eighteen, you can join the board where the story's posted and read it there. I'm not tryin' to be a hard-ass, but I don't have time to vet out each person that asks for the story and make sure they're of age. I really don't have time to send out emails every time I update, to be honest. It's already kind of inconvenient that I have to rewrite every chapter, but that's something I knew I was getting into when I decided to post this story here, knowing how this story was going to go. Anyway, sorry to sound like a bitch. The rules of the site say no NC-17 so that's where I have to go with this here. Damn, when did I start giving a fuck about rules? Shit! I must be gettin' old. Grin It has also come to my attention that the timeline isn't as clear as I had thought. The story is set in 1999. That's why the music being played isn't today's top forty stuff. So this story takes place two years before the movie does. The move events will take place in 2001 in the story, because that's when the movie was released. So this part will take us up to just before the movie. Then I'm either going to start a new story for what I'm calling book two, or I'll just do some sort of divider to show were part one ends and two begins. This was supposed to be a quick little story for fun. So much for that plan, LOL. Anyway, if you enjoy this, tell a friend and tell me. If you don't like it tell me, and tell me why! Always, Tempest.

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter nine – **Of Bruised Skin and Bruised Egos**

They picked out several movies and headed back to the house affectionately known as 'the fort.' When Jesse pulled the car into the driveway it was to find Vince sitting on the front step. Jesse and Tempest got out of the car and started for the house.

"What're you doin' out here?" she called out to Vince as they walked up the lawn.

"Trying to control my temper," he growled in answer.

When they got closer she noticed the crust of dried blood on his lower lip. "He hit you?" she asked, indignant on Vince's behalf. She tipped his head to the side to allow her a better look at his lip.

"About as good as I hit him. Our fearless leader will be showing off a nice black eye for the next few days." He winced as his smile tugged at the cut on his lip, breaking it open again so it started to ooze a bit more blood.

"And then they just left you out here alone to bleed? Did anyone clean that cut at least?"

"I'm fine, Trouble. I'm out here because I was seriously pissed and needed to take a breather. It's not like I've been banished from the house." It was amusing to see a woman ready to go to war with Dom on his behalf. "I've been banged up a lot worse than this. Once or twice I've been banged up a lot worse than this by Dominic."

"What on earth did he hit you for?"

"I think it was when I told him to mind his own fuckin' business he finally snapped and started throwin' fists."

"The next few days are gonna be a barrel of laughs, aren't they?" Jesse asked on a sigh.

"I'd pretty much have to go with yes."

"Maybe I'll go stay someplace else, J." Tempest turned to look at Jesse, Vince's chin still between her thumb and finger. "Half his problem is the fact he don't like me, and in turn the way I act around," she coughed to cover her moment of thought, "around certain elements of this place."

"You ain't goin' nowhere. Dom's just gotta learn to let people live their own damn lives." Vince shook his head free of her grip and stood up. "What movies did you get?"

Jesse named off the three blockbusters and Vince opened the door, motioning for the cousins to walk ahead of him into the house. They put a movie on. Jesse sat on the end of a couch and Tempest leaned against his side, resting her head on his shoulder and curling her feet up under her. The next thing she knew she had Vince's head on her hip and Dom's irate gaze on her face.

"You tryin' to start another fight with me in the middle this time?" she asked out of the corner of her mouth.

Vince looked up at her face, a look of chagrin on his. He knew she was right and that was exactly what was likely to happen. But moving now would just be obvious. "You looked comfy. Don't we look like one big happy fuckin' family?" He smirked up at her.

"Fuck you," she said, but she fought a smile as she said it and there was laughter in her voice.

"That's on the agenda for later."

"Overshare," Jesse said, holding up one hand toward their direction.

"I agree. If you really thought so, you best revise your evening plans now."

"Shut up and watch the movie, Trouble."

"Ditto, your Surliness."

Jesse snorted.

"All of you, shut the fuck up!" Leon yelled, throwing popcorn at Vince to illustrate his point. Vince picked the popcorn off his shirt and ate it.

Mia rolled her eyes. Every day something in her life illustrated very clearly for her the fact that she was either an underpaid daycare worker or a curator of large mammals in the zoo she called home. It didn't help that the only female she normally had around was just as bad, and now the temporary charge was also more ape than lady.

When the first movie ended, she put on the second one. By the time it was over everyone agreed it was time for bed. Everyone but for Tempest and Leon, who were both asleep where they rested.

"What did you do to my cousin today?" Jesse asked Vince. "She never falls asleep before one am. She's dead to the world and it's only twelve."

As much as he wanted to answer honestly, he knew it wouldn't be a good thing to do. He improvised, cutting down the truth to the bare minimum. "All that walking around the fairgrounds I guess."

"Just let her sleep there," Mia offered.

"I'll wake her," Jesse decided. "She'll be happier waking up downstairs in the morning."

"I'll take her downstairs, let her sleep," Vince broke in. The look on his face dared Mia to have something to say about it. Mia turned away to go upstairs in a huff.

"I could probably carry her down," Jesse offered.

"I can carry her down twice over, so why strain yourself?" Vince teased the less muscular Jesse. He stood up, lifting his head off her hip where it had been pillowed.

"Ok then, night," Jesse said before heading downstairs.

Vince picked up Tempest before kicking Leon in the ribs. He moved on to poking him in the head with his toes when that didn't work to wake his friend. "Hey sleeping beauty! You gonna go to bed or sleep on the floor up here all night?" he asked, teasing Leon with a grin on his face.

"Fuck off," Leon moaned. "I can't get any sleep downstairs until after you go to sleep, you loud ass fucker. Literally."

"Shut up! She wakes up and hears you she'll die of embarrassment and cut me off," Vince grinned down at Leon. "'Sides, she's already dead to the world. After the afternoon we had I think you're safe. For tonight at least."

The leer on Vince's face let Leon know the afternoon had consisted of more than dinner and the fair, as Vince had told Dom. "God dawg, it's not fair. You know Jess was gonna try and hook me up wit' her, right?"

"Shit, really?" Vince hadn't figured on Jesse wanting his cousin mixed up with any of them.

"Yeah, thought she might make his day and move down here if she had a better reason than just gettin' a better job."

He looked down at the woman snoring lightly in his arms. "Damn, why didn't anyone tell me?"

"Because you met her first and it was all over then, wasn't it? But it's cool. I don't think me'n her are all that compatible. She's too much like Jesse in a girl's body for me to think about her that way."

"That's fine with me. I'm goin' to bed."

"You sure I'll be able to sleep tonight if I go to my room?"

"I'd never be positive, but I'm fairly sure."

"Sometimes you're one lucky bastard," Leon called. Vince chuckled in response. "Too bad you're too set in your old ways to know just how lucky you could be," Leon finished in a mumble as he picked himself stiffly up off the floor.

Vince thought he caught the gist of it, but he really wished he hadn't. If they were all going to start in on him about the whole situation he was going to go out of his mind. Why did they all care so much when it was clear that neither of the two people the whole situation actually concerned did? Since he knew he wasn't going to figure it out, he started down the stairs and into his room. He kicked the door closed, stripped off to his shorts and contemplated the woman in his bed who was still wearing her jeans and tank top. In the end he just stripped her down to her panties, pulled one of his undershirts on her and pulled the blankets over her on her side of the bed before sliding in on the other side, surprised that she didn't wake up at any point during the whole routine.

With a groan of frustration he set and turned on his alarm clock. No blowing off Dom tomorrow if he didn't want to start a world war over a girl who wouldn't be around to still be a problem in a few days. He'd have to get up on time and he knew it. There were a lot of things he hated in the world, but getting up before eleven am had to come close to the top of the list. He wasn't the type to sign up for the whole eight to five with an hour for lunch kind of job. He much preferred to rise and live on his own schedule. And that schedule never included becoming conscious before lunch time, if he could help it.

With a groan of a different sort, his brain started working some time later. All he remembered was going to sleep. _I'm dreaming! That's it._ He convinced himself the only way he was waking up the way he was, was if he was actually dreaming he was waking up the way he was. A small pair of hands were trailing softly across his skin, occasionally using a set of well manicured nails to scrape instead. The touch was different from that of the kind of girl he normally found himself with, and it was mildly puzzling. What she was doing to him took more precedence than thoughts of how she was doing it. But the sensation that they knew each other was different from the perfunctory way things always felt when a person only took racer chasers to bed. They didn't care who they were with; the things they did were merely a means to an end. A way to steal their fifteen minutes of fame any way they could. As they couldn't or didn't race for their fame, they could sleep their way into the beds of those who both did and won. So while they couldn't brag about whom they had beaten or how fast they'd had to go to do it, they could brag about _whom_ they'd done, and what they'd had to do upon arriving in the bed of that winning racer.

In his dream, or so he told himself, he opened his eyes to find out which of the normal suspects from his dream world was present, only to encounter a head of hair not red or blonde, but a color saved from being black only by the hints of deepest red present throughout. _Tempest. _This was no dream. The way he'd had her figured, she wasn't really forward enough to do what she was doing. Not that he was complaining, just contemplating the shock. A quick glance at the clock showed it was a whole hour before the alarm was set to go off. _Lot's of time to ensure we both get out of bed happy_, he mused with a grin.

He got her attention and she smiled cheekily at him when she knew he was awake. "Hope you don't mind waking up a bit early. I must have fallen asleep early last night."

"Yeah," he rasped.

"I figured when I woke up early I must have. It doesn't take long for me to get bored when I'm stuck in bed with nothing to do, so I made my own fun."

He started to make some of his own before an evil grin crossed his face as he looked at her. "I'm gonna try and be quiet not to wake Leon," he told her with a grin. "Think you can handle it?"

"I can do my best."

He went out of his way to make sure she couldn't keep up her end of the deal. She got so caught up in the heat of the moment he knew that being quiet was the last of her priorities. He wasn't so different. She already had a few tricks she knew drove him over the edge. Quiet just wasn't something either of them seemed capable of.

Some time later she smirked at him, her breathing still slightly out of rhythm. "Do you think we saved Leon from an early wake up call, or were we too loud?"

"I don't know. You can ask him later. I don't care anymore." He settled her against his chest with a contented sigh.

She buried her head in his shoulder in embarrassment at the suggestion. "I'm not asking him if he's heard us. It's bad enough to me they all know what's going on."

"You're an adult and so am I Trouble. It doesn't matter if they know what two adults do with their free time."

"I know that, but it's almost disrespectful to Dominic when he'd clearly rather we didn't."

"I live here too. If I wanna share my room and my bed with you and you're agreeable, I don't appreciate Dom and Mia butting into the situation. Jesus, you'd think from how they act I accosted you the second you stepped outta your damn car and tied you up in my room to become a slave to my desires. We both know it's the other way around."

"I dunno. You did accost me the second I got outta my car. Actually you accosted me on the phone before we even met, remember?"

"Yeah, I'm the ignorant prick who was just tryin' to give you directions."

"You _were_ pretty ignorant to me."

"I was havin' a bad day."

"When aren't you?"

"I'm predictin' today goes pretty good."

"I'll just bet you are."

"I'm half tempted to phone in sick and keep you here all day."

"I told Jesse that he could make plans and have me all to himself today. Guess you might as well go to work."

"Thanks." He faked a deeply wounded look. "Used for sex and kicked out of my own bed. What's the world coming to?"

"Dunno." She watched as Vince slid out from under her and stood up, walking toward his dresser. "You know, the alarm hasn't gone off yet."

"It will in ten minutes."

"You're right. At your age, ten minutes clearly isn't enough time for you to recover from the first time and," she raised an eyebrow, "get ready to go again." She watched him stalk back over beside the bed.

"How old did Jesse tell you I am?" he growled.

"Twenty two."

"Ok, so he didn't lie. That ain't exactly old you know."

"Looks like a million from where I sit."

He did some quick mental math. "Jesse'll be twenty next month, so that makes you nineteen don't it?"

"Three months shy of twenty."

"And I'll be twenty three in September, so that only makes me just under three years older than you."

"Seems like decades when you're so easy to wear out and decrepit."

He was on her like a flash. "I'll show you easy to wear out."

"You know your alarm is gonna go off any minute, right?"

He reached behind himself and threw the clock radio on the floor with enough force to rip the plug out of the wall socket. "I set it twenty minutes earlier than I had to anyway, hoping to convince you to give me a quick reason to have a nice day."

As he lay wrapped around her spoon style in the center of the bed later he mumbled, "Still think I'm too old?"

"No. I think _I'm _gonna die young. But as you say, at least I'll die happy."

"You'll recover." He looked at the still functioning clock on his wall. "I really do have to get up now or I'll be late again. I gotta get in the shower."

"You could call in sick like you said. Sleep a bit longer."

"You made plans with the kid, remember? Doubt you wanna tell him your plans with him are called on account of you spending the day in bed with me."

"You're right," she answered, blushing. "Go take your shower. I'm gonna just pass out until Jesse comes to wake me up."

He got out of bed after leaning over her to kiss her mouth. Once he was up he handed her the shirt she had been wearing and her underwear. "You might want to put some clothes on so he's not scarred for life."

"Good point." She wiggled into her underwear and started to pull his undershirt over her head.

"Maybe I will go tell Dom I'm not feeling good." Watching her wiggle around into the clothes had brought to mind other things that made her wiggle around in his bed. He had to honestly admit he had had about a months worth of sex in the last few days, but when it was sex with her he couldn't get enough.

"No you won't," she mumbled, already half asleep again. She was feeling pretty relaxed.

"You're right. I'll see you tonight. We're supposedly goin' racin'. You can ride in my car and hang on my arm so no guys feel it necessary to offend you by tryin' to pick you up, ok?"

"We'll see," she said, clearly already half asleep.


	10. Of Car Culture Mating Rituals and Dreams

AN: With Much love to Ian—Or Knight, if you prefer ;)—for being my most loyal and supportive fan of this story, here we go again. Why? 'Cause I wanna. Much love to everyone else who reads. Comments, questions, suggestions, or concerns can be directed my way in reviews or via e-mail.

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 10 – **On Car Culture Mating Rituals and Building Dreams**

With a jealous look, because going back to sleep was something he'd have loved to be able to do, Vince headed to the bathroom and got in the shower. When he arrived at the breakfast table along with everyone else, freshly showered and not snapping everyone's head off to boot Mia looked at him in speculation.

"You're in an awfully good mood this morning, V."

"I'm ok," he answered around a mouthful of hash browns. He caught her narrow-eyed look his way. "Don't look at me like that. I'm not allowed to wake up in an ok mood once in awhile?"

She just shrugged.

"Jesse not coming down to the shop today?" Leon asked the group in general.

"Trouble says they have plans today," Vince answered before he could think better of it.

"Why do you insist on calling that girl Trouble? She has a name," Dom said.

"Yeah, and now she has a nickname. She likes it. Besides, she is."

"You got that right," Dom mumbled.

"Do I have to give you a right eye to match your left?" Vince asked in a deceptively cheerful tone of voice. He was willing to tease, and take some good natured teasing. The serious tone in Dom's voice set his nerves on edge. He wasn't willing to hear his friend put down his lover. Again, it was one of those things he wouldn't allow himself to analyze too deeply.

"I'd like to see you try."

"Lemme eat first and I'll help you out there."

"I'm not going to fight you, Vince."

"Likely the smartest thing you said in a long time," Vince said, again almost too cheerfully.

Dom growled. Letty looked from her boyfriend to one of her best friends. "Let it go you two. Shit! You all act like there's somethin' wrong with two adults havin' a little hot sex," she grinned at the shock on the faces around her. Vince winked at her cheerfully; glad to have someone on his side.

"How do you know its hot sex?" Vince asked, wanting to piss Dom off even farther.

"I heard you two the night before last at about six am when I went for a drink. I heard enough to know what kinda sex I was hearin'."

Vince had no control over the flush that started to creep up his neck. Letty had heard? That was unsettling. Letty, the tomboy who had tagged along behind he and Dominic in everything they did as kids. Letty, the woman who was now sleeping with Dominic, and had always seemed as much like a kid sister as Dom did a brother. That Letty knew what he sounded like in his room when he wasn't alone. It was weird.

She laughed at his discomfort. "Besides, it'd be hard to miss the bruise the size of Texas on your neck, right close to your shoulder. She a biter, V?" Letty wasn't done embarrassing her friend yet. "I know she's a scratcher 'cause you didn't stop wearin' tank tops after you started sleepin' wit her and the battle wounds show. They also seem to be multiplying on a daily basis." She lifted the edge of his tank top to peek under. "Yep, some of these are definitely fresh. I think Mia has her answer to why you're so happy. You definitely got a better wake up call than the squeal of an alarm clock this morning."

"Uh," Vince struggled for a way to answer that one with Leon staring right at him, smirking, and Mia staring at him with a look of intense shock on her face. It was clear she had just picked up on the bruise, complete with teeth marks, marring the skin of his neck.

Letty let him off the hook with a laugh, delivered through a huge grin, and a slap off his back. "Just don't let us get used to happy in the morning Vince, or we'll never let Temp go home. Fuck, there've been some days I woulda paid her to make you this happy. No matter how she had to go about it!"

The whole scenario just flabbergasted Mia. Not only was Vince sleeping with Jesse's cousin—something she had known happened the once, at any rate—apparently he was so good at it she was scratching the skin off his back and biting him hard enough to wound him elsewhere. That side of Vince wasn't one she had ever allowed herself to see, let alone think on. He was so rough and tumble in everything else he did, how could he possibly be good at sex? Good enough to make a girl so loud they could be heard from the basement stairs. Good enough to make her bite and scratch at him in passion. It just didn't bear thinking on. She looked over at Vince again. He sure did look uncomfortable. But he was also definitely happy with his current lot too. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen him fit to talk to before two cups of coffee and a full breakfast. If she didn't have her misgivings about how Vince saw the relationship he had with Tempest, and about how he was still chasing after her, even though he was actively sleeping with someone else, she might even be happy to see Vince happy. But the whole way he'd hooked up with Jesse's 'baby girl' just left a bad taste in her mouth, even if it didn't really seem to bother Jesse.

Dom saved Vince from finding a suitable answer to Letty's statement when he stood up. "Let's get to work. We don't need to be sitting around Mia's breakfast table to have this kind of conversation. You expect dirty, filthy talk outta men in a shop, not in front of their families at breakfast."

"Chill out Dom. It's not like you and I haven't had a few wild nights."

"We're allowed Let. It's part of the whole dating relationship." Her words finally broke the upset look off his face, replacing it with a grin.

They all left for the garage, piling into their separate cars for the drive, not one of them willing to be driven rather than drive.

Once Vince had gotten dressed and left her alone in his room, Tempest did fall back asleep. Her body felt like Jello and she couldn't imagine getting up without a power nap to recover.

Sprawled on her tummy with a pillow under one arm and her head was how Jesse found her just over an hour after she'd fallen back asleep. Her hair was everywhere and it was hard to miss the numerous small bruises on the sides of her neck, not to mention the larger one on her nape. Jesse found himself wishing that her and Vince would work their shit out so that they both realized they wanted to be together for more than two weeks. He was still caught up in his opinion that meeting a guy would be the thing that finally pushed her into a desire to pick up and move countries.

He threw himself onto the bed beside her and sighed. He wondered if the bouncing she'd done when he'd landed would be enough to wake her. She flipped onto her back with a sigh.

"What time is it?" she asked in a sleepy voice.

"Ten," Jesse answered.

"That's not so bad," she said, yawning as she did so. "What's the plan for today J?"

"Thought we'd go to the garage."

"You work in the garage every day."

"But not with you. I got a surprise for you at the garage. We'll go see it and if you don't wanna stick around than I'll pick somethin' else, ok?"

"Ok," she agreed, still slightly confused by his desire to take her to his work. "Should I just get dressed, or should I get dressed to work on cars?"

"To work on cars, I think."

"Ok, lemme get a quick shower and we'll go."

"I'll get ready." He stood up off the bed. "What the fuck happened to the alarm clock?"

"Um." Her eyes darted from the abused clock to Jesse's blue gaze and back again. "Well," she started to speak and stopped again.

"Never mind. I don't wanna know," Jesse groaned. He could tell from the look on her face he really didn't want the details. He left the room and heard his cousin start the shower a few moments later.

After Tempest showered she headed back to Vince's room wrapped in her towel and started to paw through her clothes. She settled on a pair of her navy blue work pants, which like over half her pants were about three sizes too large, a sports top and a navy blue work shirt left open over her top. She figured if she got hot she could take the shirt off and if she got really involved in some mechanical job she could do the shirt up. She put her hair up in two messy buns on the back of her head and left the room. "I'm ready!" she called beside Jesse's door.

He came out, wearing stained jeans and a ripped tee shirt. "Let's go."

They headed up the stairs and out into the hot sun. Tempest stopped beside the passenger door of the Jetta.

"You gotta take your own car. I'll go careful so you can follow me."

"Why can't I just ride with you?"

"You just can't."

"Fine," she gave up with a sigh. So much for spending time with him. He started down the street and she followed. She realized she recalled the way there and passed him at her first chance. She arrived a few minutes ahead of him and stood beside her car, waiting to rub it in. "That thing's as slow as a city bus," she called as he walked up to her from where he'd parked the Jetta.

"It's no Skyline," he answered, taking her teasing in a good natured, Jesse way. He led the way into the shop. He turned to look at Tempest inside the door. "You go to work in a bra and pants big enough to fit a man up home?" he asked, again unimpressed with her choice of attire.

Realizing she had her work shirt tied around her waist because it had been so hot in her car, Tempest knew where he was coming from, but she decided to brazen it out. "If the boys I work with have been good, sometimes I forgo the pants and just wear my bikini panties to work. But only when they really deserve a reward."

"God, you're even more evil now than I remembered," Jesse groaned. "I don't want to think of you that way. You're more like a sister than a cousin to me and I really don't need the mental image."

She untied the arms of her shirt and shrugged it on before doing up two buttons over her stomach, leaving a deep v over her cleavage and across her stomach. "Better?"

"A little."

"Ok, what's the surprise you dragged me into a garage over when I'm on vacation from another garage?"

"Back here," Jesse said, leading the way to a back section of the garage floor.

She followed him through the maze of toolboxes and cars, ever conscious of the stares from Dom, Letty, Leon and Vince. When they reached the back area, Tempest found it to be covered by car parts. "You want me to sort, catalogue, and store your inventory for you on my vacation?" she asked, her eyebrow cocked in disbelief. There were a shit load of parts in front of her and she couldn't imagine what else he would want to do with them.

"No, I want to help you build your Skyline in person, not over the internet." Jesse grinned.

"This stuff is all for the Skyline?"

"Unhuh," he answered to the affirmative.

"Where the fuck did you get it all? Please don't tell me that someone," she glanced at Vince and Leon in turn, "found it when it fell off the back of a truck."

"Nothing like that. Me'n Leon went down to Harry and told him about the car and about the fact you already had some interest from HKS and Veilside. He asked me what kind of parts I wanted to put in it, so I told him what we'd already kicked around. He had all the shit you see here sponsored by the end of the day and on overnight shipment."

"Harry?" Tempest asked in shock. She knew she'd get a lot of her parts sponsored, but not her whole damn car. She really didn't know what to say.

"He owns the parts store that Dom does all his business with, 'The Racer's Edge.' He'd appreciate it greatly if you'd put the name of the store on the car for as long as you're down here, but other than that since he already had all the contacts at all the suppliers he didn't mind organizing the parts."

"A lot of this shit is bolt on. We could have my car done by when?"

"Tonight."

"No shit?"

"No shit. It'll take us 'til ten if we do the upper end, the valves and cams, and the lower end with the forged pistons and upgraded rings, but it'll still be done tonight."

With an ecstatic squeal Tempest launched herself at Jesse, who caught her. She proceeded to rain kisses all over Jesse's face, which rapidly turned red. "Thanks J."

"No sweat. I can't wait to see the look on the faces of everyone at races when we roll up with two Skylines."

"So this was more about braggin' rights at races than about doing a nice turn for your poor cousin, huh?"

"No, of course not. I wanna be able to roll with you, not drive you around all over L.A. cuz."

"In that case, let's get'er done!"

"Yes!"

Tempest tossed Jesse her keys and let him pull the car into the shop. While he was doing that she started taking inventory of the parts on the floor and across a shop bench in the rear. She found a set of TEIN coil-overs and a TIEN pillow rod camber kit to match. There was an Apexi exhaust, Apexi downpipe, and a matching straight pipe to replace her catalytic converter. She found Brembo brakes for front and rear with the trademark gold callipers, four piston at that, huge cross drilled rotors and ceramic pads to complete the set. There was a huge box from NISMO. Unable to help herself she opened it and peered inside. She found a set of NISMO cams, a set of NISMO pulleys, NISMO timing belt, and a NISMO clutch and pressure plate. From HKS she found two huge turbos, a huge front mount intercooler along with all the needed plumbing, a new wastegate and blow-off valve, and a cold air intake. There was a NOS Sportsman direct port nitrous system able to handle up to a hundred and fifty horsepower shot with two ten pound bottles.

Jesse came up behind her. "What'd ya think?"

"I think my car is going to be the fastest car in my whole country when I go home."

"You gonna kick a little ass down here before you go?"

"Hell yes!" she laughed. "You know it." They high fived each other with matching grins.

"Let's get started then."

They took the hood off the Skyline, setting it carefully aside so the paint wouldn't get damaged, and got ready to start working on the engine. Leon came over. "Want a hand?"

"What'd you think cuz?" Jesse asked Tempest.

"The more the merrier, if you're not going to be blowing off work over it." Tempest shot a covert glance at Dominic. The last thing she wanted was more trouble with the large man.

"It's not too busy right now. If we jack her up while you guys do that, I'll start the brakes and suspension stuff."

They took his advice. Jesse and Tempest removed the heads from the engine and started to install the upgraded cams and valve springs while Leon started on the suspension. They managed to get the strengthened pistons into the engine without removing the block, which saved them some time. By the time the cousins were putting the engine back together, Leon was working on the brake system. They did the exhaust together before dropping the car off the jack stands and installing the turbos, intake, and intercooler. Tempest, unused to so much engine work, flopped on her back on the floor before propping herself up on her elbows to watch as Jesse and Leon wired in the new turbo timer, boost controller, radar detector, air/fuel, water temperature, vacuum, and charge status gauges and installed the nitrous system.

"You done in already, Trouble?" Vince asked as he crouched down beside her.

"Yes," she groaned, falling off her elbows so she was again prone on the floor, looking up at Vince. "I do front end, brakes, suspension, and electrical back home. We have an engine specialist so I never have to do any of this stuff. All the clearances and tolerances and lashes have to be so precise. It's a lot for the head to take. If I ever see another piece of Plastigauge it'll be too soon."

"I know what you mean."

"So," she said, looking up at Vince. "Is this what you do for a living? Work for Dom?"

"Not so much, no. He asked me to help out while we were short Jess and I said I would. If I had'a known how dead it would be, I woulda said no."

"I thought Jesse said the Saturday I showed up was busy."

"It was. Saturday always is. The losers who can't work on their own car show up to have Dom do their dirty work."

"I see. So what do you do when you aren't doing favours for Dom?"

"I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you."

"Ha ha." She gave him a sarcastic look. "Seriously. What, are you some sort of assassin for the government or somethin'? I mean, if you are they must not require very accurate shooters, but is it that top secret?"

"Kinda." He let her poke at his skill with a firearm slide. He didn't want to hear about how she'd beaten him again. "Let's just say I work for some people who pay very well to have someone who knows how to handle themselves in close situations and knows how to keep his mouth shut."

"I see," she answered, watching her cousin and his friend work on her nitrous system. "Does that pay good?"

The fact she seemed genuinely interested and not put off shocked him a bit. He had to guess she got he was implying he was someone's hired muscle for a living. Someone who didn't need him to help them uphold the law, but rather the exact opposite. "Yeah, it wouldn't be worth doing, and running the risk of getting caught every day if it didn't."

"I suppose. So why is it you know so much about cars and can work in the garage if it isn't what you wanted to do?"

"It was what I wanted to do, once upon a time. When Mr. Toretto taught me about cars I did think it was what I was going to do with my life. But then he died and Dom and I found out we're too much alike to work together day in and day out so I had to find somethin' else to do. It works out pretty good for us, really. So why'd you get involved with cars? Hang around them with your dad or somethin'?"

"Never knew my dad. He and my mom got a divorce when I was like six months old. He took off and I've never met him. She says she was just as well off to be rid of him and I don't even remember him so I'd have to agree with her. No, I dunno what got me into cars. I was interested in American heavy metal when I was a kid, like twelve. Thought I was gonna get a mustang convertible, sixty seven to be exact, and restore it perfectly. Didn't happen, but I took shop in high school. Then I started university right out of high school. Cars were a hobby for me. I was going to be a veterinarian. But I flunked out of university after one semester and ended up in college in Auto Tech. Couldn't shake the idea that was what I was meant to do. I just finished in April and walked into my job with GM. I'm slowly building up hours to get my interprovincal red seal."

"You like what you do?"

"Yeah. Cars don't talk back. When they act up there's a reason why and I like figuring out what it is."

"You any good?"

She looked up at him to gauge his seriousness. He seemed totally serious. "Yeah, I'm good. I'm related to Jesse." She grinned.

"You as good as he is?"

"I could be, if I learned to trust my gut and not second guess everything I ever thought or did. I think too much."

He nodded. He had to agree with her in some respects. There were things she definitely over thought. "They're almost done with your car."

"I know. I know you can't tell, but I'm excited. I'm just too tired to get up and dance right now."

"And dirty. You're gonna have to rush to get ready for races. We should be there by eleven and it's already nine thirty."

"God," she groaned. "I hate to rush."

"I want you to do me a favour."

"What?"

"Leave the Skyline here for the night and ride with me."

"But they put all this work into having it ready tonight."

"I know. But they'll be cool with it. Ok?"

"I'll ask them and we'll see, ok?"

"Sure."

He really didn't have the anger she would have expected from him when she wouldn't commit to doing as he asked. With a shrug she let it go and walked over to Leon and Jesse. "Would you guys mind if we left this here for the night? I forgot I made another commitment for tonight."

"No sweat. We don't have to try and rush to finish it then. We'll finish it up in the morning. You look tired."

They caved a lot easier than she had expected and she had some questions on that front. But her need to tease Jesse about telling her she looked tired took priority. "Thanks Jesse. That's just what a girl wants to hear before she goes on display at some sort of bizarre, car culture mating ritual where the females are all judged on their looks."

"Sorry. I'm sure you'll look better after you shower and change out of your shop clothes."

"Nice try at a save, Jess."

Leon laughed at Jesse's discomfort. "Yeah dawg, don't you know you never tell a girl she don't look good."

"She's not a girl, she's my cousin," Jesse protested.

"She's still a female, moron," Leon laughed.

"She's a female who needs a ride home if she's expected to show up and be conscious at races tonight and not wearing sweat pants with grease on her nose and in her hair. Who's drivin' me home?"

"Come on Trouble. I'll take you home and we'll leave these two yahoos to lock up the shop. I don't have the codes anyways."

"Yeah, go ahead with Vince," Jesse said, giving Tempest a shove toward the door. "We'll see you guys at home in a few."

"Shit, what? Do I have some communicable disease?" Tempest asked as she was forced out the door.

"No, they just know how long it takes chicks to get ready and they don't want to be late. The sooner you get home, the sooner we get to leave and they know it."

"I'm not like Mia, I don't have to primp and preen for six hours to get ready."

"But you do need to shower, fuss with your hair and get changed."

"I don't fuss with my hair."

"You can't leave it in these messy balls on the back of your head either." He flicked one of her messy buns with his finger. He saw down the back of her shirt, saw the bruise he'd left her with. Something, some emotion ran through him. Pride, but with something more. He'd marked her as his. He shrugged, figuring it was just a guy thing.

"No I can't," she answered with a roll of her eyes before taking off her dirty shirt and balling it up so she could climb into the Maxima. She didn't want grease off her dirty shirt to get all over the seat. "That doesn't mean I fuss either," she finished after Vince got into the car.

He started it and zipped out of his parking spot, before racing off down the road. "Still takes you longer to get ready than it does a guy."

"I can get ready as fast as any dude out there."

"No you can't."

"Haven't you learned your lesson about challenging me yet? I've taken you at every challenge you've issued and come out on top every time."

"Some times you come out on the bottom, or in front, or on the side too," he reminded with a suggestive look.

"You're just a sick pervert with sex on the brain twenty four seven."

"When you wear a little gym shirt and pants so big they're hanging off your ass in front of me all day, what am I supposed to think?"

"That I'm an efficient and talented technician who did as much work, if not more, than all the guys I was working with today."

He shot her a speculative look. "I know you're good at what you do. Did I ever say I didn't think you were?"

"No. But you do insist on objectifying me as a sex object every chance you get. I guess I just think there's a time and place for it, and a time and place to acknowledge that women have other roles too."

"I don't objectify you every chance I get. But when I see you like that I think about the sex we've had and the sex I want to have because it's been more than twelve hours since the last time. I want you when you're around. I can't help that. You're hot Trouble. I can't help that. I didn't make you that way."

She laughed. No one had ever called her hot to her face before. She liked it, as much as she knew she shouldn't be encouraging him to sum her up by the sex they had. "You could try to cultivate some affection for my brain too."

"I'll work on it." He parked the car in front of the house. "Now go and prove you're as quick as you said at getting ready. I'll shower upstairs and you can shower down."

"Ok." She got out of the car and ran lightly over the lawn, up to the front door. She ran in and with a quick wave at the people in the living room rushed down the stairs.


	11. Of Tall Blondes and Rubbing it in

**AN: You're right! Someone's gotta shake things up between them. But my girl's just a little more proactive than you think. ;) As for just how like her I am, a lady never tells. ;P Enjoy the chapter, all my wonderful readers. Must go, catching up on all the Grey's Anatomy I missed before I knew I liked this show. I have a lot of hating Addison to do and a lot of staring at Dr. McDreamy to do. Ta ta.**

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Eleven – **Of Tall Blondes and Rubbing it in**

Vince walked into the house at a more sedate pace.

"You get her car done?" Letty questioned.

"Could'a but didn't. I worked out another little surprise for her with the boys. We're takin' my car together tonight. Hers'll be ready for Saturday's races."

"What else are you doin' to hers?"

"You'll see when everyone else sees Lett. Just chill."

"Go get ready Vince. We're gonna be late," Dom said from his position under Letty in their favourite chair.

"Ok, I won't be long. Don't get your panties in a twist."

Dom growled as Letty and Mia laughed at the joke.

Vince headed upstairs and used the upstairs bathroom to shower in. When he arrived down in his room to get changed, it was to find Tempest already showered, dressed, and with her hair done. Of course, all she'd done with it was brush it out after she'd washed it and left it down to curl as it dried. She was fastening the back on one earring when he walked in. He was mildly ticked to see she hadn't been blowing smoke up his ass when she told him she was capable of getting ready as fast as he was. She'd actually managed to get ready faster. He consoled himself with the knowledge that he'd had to walk up the stairs and then down two more flights. "Mia's gonna be pissed to know you had clothes like that but let her think wifebeaters were as dressy as you got," he said. She was wearing tube top with separate sleeves in electric blue and a pair of black pants just like the pair she'd worn to party with Jesse, but with electric blue piping, not pink. Her top was cropped about three inches above her navel and her pants about four inches below it. She had on a pair of flip flops, but fancier than her normal pair. They had a four inch thick sole and little diamante butterflies on the strap. There was now electric blue polish on her toes and fingernails.

"I really don't hold with getting this dressed up to go to a dirty alleyway and watch cars race. But as they say, when in Rome."

"You look," he moved right up behind her, "and smell, good enough to eat."

"Maybe later," she said, absentmindedly. "You know I'm ready and you're not. That means I win again. Put some clothes on. We gotta go."

"I didn't know you were in such a rush."

"You're in a rush, remember?"

"Dom's the one who's really in a rush," he answered, walking over to his dresser and pulling out a clean pair of jeans and sliding into them before retrieving his belt off his previous pair and sliding it into the loops of his current pair. He then pulled a black tee shirt out of another drawer and tugged it on.

Seeing him dressed in the black shirt, which fit him like a second skin, and dark jeans caused a hitch in her breathing she did her best to hide from him. "Come here a sec," she said, nodding her head to motion him her way. He walked up to her and paused right in front of her, close enough that she could feel his body heat.

"Wha?"

"You didn't even bother stoppin' to do your damn hair. Here, lemme just," she trailed off with her lower lip caught between her teeth as she reached up and started to arrange the wet, spiky hair on his head.

He watched her play with his hair to her satisfaction for a minute. "T?"

"Um?" she answered, still distracted by the beautiful disarray she was creating on his head.

"I'll do," he chuckled, before leaning down and using his teeth to gently tug her lower lip free of her own. Once he had it released from her bite he sucked on it before kissing her, sliding his hands across her bare stomach to settle in the equally bare small of her back. He kissed her for a minute or two before standing up away from her. "Let's go before the rest of the team panics, ok?"

"Ok," she murmured, before licking her lips and looking up at him from under her eyelashes.

"If you keep looking at me like that we won't be going anywhere. Remember what I said about more than twelve hours and you being around me in those little outfits you wear?"

"Ok, ok, let's go already." She led the way out the door and up the stairs. Jesse and Leon were no where to be seen. "Where's J and Leon?" Tempest asked the group in general.

"Still getting ready," Mia answered. Her eyes narrowed. "Where'd you find that outfit?"

"Um," she hedged, not wanting to answer. "It was in my bag," she admitted with a chagrined smile.

"Where was it on Saturday night then?"

"Right in my bag where I left it. Listen, I don't really believe in getting this dolled up to go watch cars race. It wasn't how I learned to race. When I race I just drive all over my city and wait to be challenged. There is no standing around beside my car for hours at a time. I don't need to be dressed up like racer chaser Barbie to go racing at home."

"So you really do race, not just watch?" Mia asked.

"There's not a lot of fun to be had tuning a car to watch other people race."

Before Mia could answer Jesse and Leon came up the stairs. "We're ready. Let's roll!" Jesse called.

"You put my car someplace safe for the night?"

"Yeah, Ray is fine."

"Ray?" Dom asked.

"Her car's name is Raiden, or Ray for short," Jesse filled in.

"Jesse." She drew his name out to illustrate her frustration that he had told everyone she had named her car, and considered it a male.

"Dom's has a name," Letty said. "But it's a girl's name."

"Well, Dom's a guy so he has a girl car. I'm a girl so I have a guy car. It's all relative."

"Let's go already," Dom said as he stood up. "We're gonna get there half an hour late as it is." He didn't like to find out anything he had in common with 'Trouble', a name he was inclined to agree sure did suit her very well.

They left the house and got into their cars. Dom, Letty, Leon and Jesse took their own. Mia rode with Letty and Tempest slid into the Maxima. They darted in and out of traffic and around each other playfully as they raced toward the downtown area their warehouse meeting place was stationed in. Leon and Vince zipping around each other and cutting each other off in a way that let Tempest know it was something they did a lot of. When she considered how often they wrestled and playfully fought with each other too, it wasn't hard to see they really were best friends. When they reached the open area leading up to the mouth of the alley they fell into position, entering the alley in their 'flying V' pattern.

They parked the car just behind Letty's Silvia, Jesse off to their right and Leon just in front of Jesse. The skanks descended immediately on the guys. Jesse and Leon lapped it up. Letty got pissed off and decked one of the barely clothed girls hanging on Dominic. Dom snapped at her for it, and it didn't go over well with her, which led to Letty stalking off to talk to some girls she knew. Mia followed her and joined the conversation. Soon, both dark girls were laughing at something one of Edwin's girls had said.

Tempest slid out of the Maxima and surveyed the scene through slightly jaded eyes. She was surprised how little time it had taken for her to become cynical of the scene. She found herself judging the girls who were busy flaunting the physical assets they had. She found herself thinking they should show some self respect and start looking for a guy who wanted them for their brain, not their giant boobs. Then she took a step back and looked at her own situation. She was letting a guy use her for exactly what he could be getting from them. Only difference was, as long as she was around he didn't have to pick up a different one every race night. So in short, she figured she had no call to judge any of the girls hanging out of their clothes around her. Well, except that she would never have stooped so low as to try and pick up someone like Dominic, someone who was taken, and the fact he was attached well known at that.

As she watched, three girls, one red head, one dark blonde with fire engine red highlights, and one platinum blonde walked up to Vince and started talking to him. He smiled down at them as he allowed himself to be sucked into the conversation. She sighed with a roll of her eyes. So much for hanging on his arm. If he thought she was going to pull a Letty and snarl at them for doing what they'd only been taught and encouraged to do by guys like him, he could think again. She wasn't going to be down for any cat fights over some oversexed alley tom. If he wanted to have his cake and eat it too, he could take one of those girls home with him for the night, because she would not watch him touch them right in front of her and let him take _her_ to bed afterwards.

Her cynical green gaze scanned the area. It found the best looking sight her sore eyes could have landed on. A very tricked out, metallic purple second generation RX-7 with platinum flames licking up the hood and down the doors from the front fenders. It wasn't the most original design in the world, but it was very well executed. "Slick," she drawled under her breath. Her Skyline might be one ace of a car, but her RX-7 was her first love and she fully intended to rebuild the engine and put it back on the road too. But for now, the one she was looking at across the way was one fine piece of machinery. She started toward it, eyes only for the shimmering paint and blacked out windows. She walked up to the guy leaning negligently on the driver's door.

"Hey Slick, what you runnin' under there?" she asked, a hand on her hip, one corner of her mouth lifted in half a smile and her opposite eyebrow raised in question. The look on her face threw a bit of double entendre onto the question, and while she knew it wasn't the best idea to flirt with new men when the one who still considered her his for another week was only a few hundred feet away, she was going to anyway. Vince only had it coming.

The owner of the car, who happened to be a very cute, blonde man of about twenty-five stood up off his car. "Who wants to know?"

"A fellow seven devotee. Mine's a ninety, blaze red mica on black, fog lights that actually work and power mirrors, LSD and J-Spec 13-bt."

"I'd tell you what I'm runnin' but you'd never believe me," his slightly sly grin put a spin of his own on his words. "I better show you." He leaned in his car and popped the hood, opening it onto the prop rod.

"Cosmo 20B-REW," she hissed. "Three rotor, twin turbo. No shit." She looked up at the man. "Not a bad way to spend ten thousand dollars. You ever run this bad boy against Dominic?"

"Toretto?"

"Yeah."

"No. I haven't been around here long enough. Just moved to California from Jersey two months ago. You're not from around here either, are you?"

"Nope. Prince Edward Island, Canada. I'm visitin' my cousin Jesse."

"As in Jesse Adams, Dominic Toretto's infamous 'Mad Scientist'?"

"That's my boy. You've really done your homework. Yeah, Jesse just finished building the engine of my Skyline with me tonight, but we didn't get all the support mods for the new turbos done so I couldn't take it down tonight." She improvised slightly so she wouldn't have to admit she decided to be someone's date instead of driving her own tricked out Skyline—of all the things to chose some man over, really!—and ended up being passed over for a trio of air-headed sluts by the very man she'd left _her_ _Skyline_ at home over. _Boy, are you one stupid bitch!_

"Skyline? You have a Skyline and Jesse Adams just built your engine?"

His shock went a long way toward soothing her hurts. Someone thought she was cool. Even if he was a stranger she'd just met over a car in an alleyway. He _was_ cute. Surely that counted for something! "Yeah. I mean, he's my cousin. Of course he's gonna build my car. I'm a tech by trade myself but, I mean, he's _Jesse_," she finished with a grin, like her cousin's name explained everything.

The owner of the RX-7 laughed. "Yeah, I know what you mean. He's something of a legend around here. Shit, I'm sorry. I mean, my mama raised me to have manners. I'm Craig Everett." He stuck out his hand.

She took it. "Tempest James."

"Tempest?"

"Yeah, it's my real name, and I don't hate it as much as I should, given the teasing I took as a kid. You'll get it when you see the Skyline. Well, if you're gonna be around Saturday night."

"I'm gonna be around until I get to run Dominic. And that isn't going to happen any time soon." He looked around. "So, if your car isn't ready, what are you drivin' tonight?"

"I'm not." She didn't offer any more detail, and chose instead to be grateful he hadn't seen her immerge from Vince's car. Instead of elaborating on how she had arrived, she leaned into the still open engine compartment. "That's one hell of a beautiful thing," she said, looking at the perfectly installed and totally detailed engine.

"Yes it is," Craig answered, looking not at his engine but at the top of a head of curly, black cherry hair.

She missed out on the subtleties of his answer. "Those Garrett turbos?"

"Yeah. For a big turbo, the Garrett GT-40R spools quick, cuts down on the lag."

"I just have a HKS on the seven."

"Why do you have a Skyline and a seven? You collect beautiful rides or something? Still trying to find a car to own that can even come close to as pretty as you?"

"No," she answered, fighting a nervous giggle at his smooth words. She knew she wasn't ugly. She had had boyfriends and male interest in her before. But since coming to California she'd had more smooth operators come on to her than in the whole rest of her life. She detected that his flip compliment had an overtone of a serious interest in her real answer, however, so she continued. "The Skyline was a life's dream I rewarded myself with when I graduated from my auto tech program at college. The seven was a labour of blood, sweat and tears for a lotta years. I'm too attached to just let it go now that I got the Skyline. I'll likely keep on racing the seven while I show the Skyline. Can't take too many risks with a sponsored show car."

"Where's the seven now?"

She grinned up at him. "Where else? Home with a blown apex seal in the rear rotor."

He winced. "Ouch. What else, huh? How'd it happen?"

"Racing a punk in a Civic down the main drag." She looked chagrined. "Figures huh? Shoulda been able to school his ass eight ways to Sunday, but I blew up my engine and he won. I knew when the boost crept up over twenty five P that somethin' was wrong and I shoulda gave up. I mean, I don't have the fuel support for that kinda boost and I know it. Not to mention the water temperature was creeping up there too, but I kinda live my life by the motto 'go big or go the fuck home'," she grinned. "You know, push it 'til I roll it and somebody gotta tow it."

"Girl, I like how you think."

"Thanks. I'd have to go out on a limb and say the same about you." She turned back to his car. "That paint is tight. I love the big flake in the candy purple. It's simple, but flashy. Still catches the eye without being in your face."

"What's the Skyline got for paint?"

"I'ma let you find out in person on Saturday. I can't do it justice with words. You gotta see it. It's flashy, but it ain't simple." She grinned.

"You rollin' with Toretto?"

"Against his will, yeah. He don't really like me. I got a bit of a problem with authority and he's gotten used to being the boss."

"Yeah, he really has." Craig smiled down at her.

_He has to be six five_, she mused as she looked up to meet his gaze. He broke eye contact first and looked around the area.

"Your cousin shouldn't have let you wander off around here on your own. There's a lot of guys around this scene that don't know no means no."

"I can take care'a me. Don't worry. So, what possessed you to up and move from Jersey to California?"

Vince remembered Tempest with a guilty start. Candi and Monique were so much a part of his racing experience he'd just fallen into the insipid conversation they started with him to introduce their new friend Danielle. It was a different version of the exact same conversation he had with them every night and in the monotony of pretending to care what they were saying and actually looking down their shirts instead of listening, he forgot all about the fact that Tempest had arrived with him. He wondered why she hadn't kicked some 'bimbo'—as she called them—ass, as he looked over at the passenger side of his car. She wasn't there. A look of puzzlement came over his face as he thought about that. Figuring she was with Jesse, he scanned the area until his eyes came to rest on his young friend. Jesse was talking to two girls just like the three still hanging off him. Leon was also alone with two skanks. Dom was in the middle of a group of his male groupies and Mia and Letty were talking to Edwin's girls. So where the fuck was Tempest?

He started to scan the crowd further way than their immediate circle. He finally found her on the other side of the alley way, talking to a very tall, very blonde man in a black throwback with red barbed wire embroidered around the chest, black Hilfiger slacks, and Wolverine deck shoes. They were standing in front of the open engine bay of a purple RX-7. The blonde man was smiling down at something Tempest was saying, talking with her hands like she always did, and with this totally animated look on her face. The tall man she was speaking to waited for her to finish talking before he nodded his understanding or agreement to whatever she'd said. He then pointed to something under his hood. She bent over to look and he bent over with her, a hand on the small of her back as he pointed out something deeper under the hood.

Vince stood up from the hood of his car with a growl and shook off the two girls leaning on him. He started to stalk in the direction of the man with his hands on _his_ date. _Not that you treated her like she was so far_, a voice nagged. _Shut up!_ he told himself.

"So, did you make the motor mounts yourself, or did you buy 'em someplace already fabricated?"

"Bought them already made up. I don't have a great flair for metal work."

"Me either. I weld just weld enough to get myself into trouble."

"Now welding I'm good at. Thankfully, because I broke the frame."

"How'd you break the frame putting an engine in? It's not _that_ much bigger than the 13-bt."

Craig flushed. "I didn't break it during the swap. I broke it going over a hundred miles an hour over a hill, flying off the other side and landing harder than I anticipated. I didn't really calculate how much the suspension drop would affect the stiffness."

Tempest laughed. Vince watched as she laughed so hard that tears started to slip down her cheeks and she put a hand on the forearm of the blonde she was talking to. It was clear she was engaged in the conversation. The tall man she was with was talking with her, not at her and it was obvious she liked it. "That's awful."

"It was fun while I was flying, in any event." He grinned down at her. "After all, go big or go home, right?"

"Yeah, but my seven also has a graphic in the back window that says 'bad ass toys ain't just for boys' across the top, one that says 'if you're reading this, you just got your ass beat—by a girl' across the bottom, one on the right side window that says 'I'm not speeding, I'm qualifying' and one on the left side window that says 'I'm not driving fast, I'm flying low.'"

"You really like to rub it in, huh?"

"I'm that damn good."

"I can believe it. I mean, I've heard of chicks working in garages before, but never met one who really talks the talk before. You really know your shi, um, stuff."

She nodded to agree before she dried her cheeks off. "Well, I should go find my cousin before Dom decides to race and I lose Jess in the shuffle. You watch for my baby next week."

"If you won't tell me what it looks like how will I know it?"

"Um, it'll be one of only two Skylines to pick from, unless there's more than Leon's around right now. Besides, you just remember my name, and you'll know it," she said, before winking saucily up at him. He was cute, he seemed nice, had excellent taste in cars and was one of the first people other than her cousin and Leon who'd talked to her, not at her or tried to talk over her head.

"I'm not likely to forget, Miss Tempest James of Prince Edward Island, Canada."

He seemed really serious about remembering her. That small detail made her disproportionably happy. "You're good." She wagged a finger at him playfully. "I'll see you around." She started to turn to walk back toward the last place she'd seen Jesse

"Yeah, see ya around."

"Where the fuck have you been?" Vince cut in with a growl, grabbing her arm and dragging her a few steps away from where she had been standing. He was ready to see her stop flirting with the tall blonde.

"Talkin'. Now get your hands off me," she growled back. She twisted out of his grip and shoved him back a step with two firmly placed hands to his pecs.

"You shoulda known better than to just wander off, after what happened back on Saturday."

"What happened on Saturday was I was takin' care of myself when you decided to play the big man and interfere. I can take care of myself."

"By walking off on your own and talking to strangers?" he asked, his tone incredulous.

"Yeah, it's crazy how strangers can carry a conversation with me that challenges me on an intellectual level. Funny how strangers aren't here with a girl but letting a bunch of other chicks hang off them like a fuckin' alley cat."

"You came with me! Then I catch _you_ hangin' all over some other punk."

"I rode here in your car. If I came here with you I wouldn't have had to watch you with three sluts hangin off you and you lapping it up with a smile. And you couldn't _catch_ me doin' shit all because I wasn't hidin' anything from you, just like you didn't even bother to attempt to hide what you did from me. So fuck you!"

"Is everything ok?" Craig asked, moving to stand behind Tempest with a concerned frown on his face. He didn't know whether it could possibly be a good thing that the girl he'd been flirting with was clearly connected in some way to Dominic Toretto's hot headed best friend. He wanted his shot at Dom. The last thing he wanted to do was anything that could mess that up. But he really didn't approve of the rough way Vince was treating the slim, pale girl with the long, cherry tinged head of curly black hair. She was distinctly female, and watching her come up in a physical battle against someone like Vince seemed distinctly unfair.

"Butt out," Vince growled.

"Everything's fine," Tempest said, turning to her new friend. "Nothing a little walk won't fix. You care to offer me an escort, since apparently I'm not smart enough to be trusted to walk around on my own without a big strong man to watch out for me?"

At her sarcastic comments and obviously upset demeanour, Craig's frown deepened. "You sure everything's ok?"

"Nothing's wrong that getting out of this area for a few minutes won't fix."

"If you're sure? Perhaps I could walk you over to your cousin? I see him right over there." There was a fission of fear in her eyes. It was only a glimmer, but the fact it was there sealed his course. He wouldn't butt out for the sake of his chance at Dominic. Not if it meant leaving the girl to deal with over six feet and two hundred pounds of irate muscle in the form of Vince. Craig was taller, but he'd have to bet that Vince outweighed him, and knew what to do with his weight to make the most of it.

"I'll walk her where ever the fuck she needs to go," Vince growled. "You can go back to your ride."

"You don't own me Vince. You don't have the right to tell people I've asked to stick around me to fuck off. You seemed ok with your choices of red head, blonde, or all of the above, so why don't you just pick up where you left off. I mean, they're still hangin' around the Nissan."

He watched as her chin came up and her eyes took on that hard, stubborn cast that reminded him so much of Dominic. "We are gonna talk about this Trouble. Either now or later. Your choice." He leaned in close to her. "But if you insist on dragging your new friend into the situation you're only going to make life hard for him when I put him out of the picture."

She gasped at his implication. Then she got angry. She'd only been ticked off at the lack of attention she'd been receiving before. Now she was irate and fed up with his archaic attitude. She leaned even closer to Vince, ensuring Craig wouldn't hear. "You ever say anything like that to me to try and control my actions or thoughts again, I'll find a gun and take care'a _you,_" she accented her 'you' with a poke of her finger into Vince's chest, "before you become any bigger of a pain in my ass. You know how good I am. You'd never even see it comin'. Don't worry about me because I'm smart enough to rent the backhoe first, I wouldn't even have to worry about shovelling the six foot hole."

At her threat Vince saw red. He went to grab her by the upper arm again. Craig stepped between the dark haired woman and the large man she was fighting with. "I know whatever's goin' on here is none of my business, so don't get me wrong. But if you go to touch her against her will again it's going to get really ugly, really quick." The gentlemanly veneer fell away from Craig a small amount, and the steel needed to survive in a new place as mean as the City of Angles showed.


	12. Of Alley Cats and Getting Ugly

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Twelve – **Of Alley Cats and Getting Ugly**

"Shit, we got trouble," Leon said to Jesse when he saw the group of three attracting attention.

"What's wrong?" Jesse and Dom asked in unison.

"I'd say Tempest met someone new and Vince is taking exception to it."

Dom looked in that direction. "And you guys wondered why I was against this thing between them from the get go."

"In her defence, he asked her to come with him tonight and then started talking to the regulars the second he was out of the car," Jesse stood up for his cousin.

"I'm not blaming her. I'm just sayin' that's just why I didn't like the idea. I knew something like this would happen." Dom rubbed a hand over his head. "Let's go break it up before it gets ugly."

The three started toward where Craig and Vince were going toe to toe with Tempest beside them, trying not to start throwing punches of her own.

"If you know it's none of your business, stay the fuck out of it."

"Guys don't grab girls around me if the girl doesn't want it. That's just how it is. She told you to leave her alone, so take her advice and leave her alone. I'll make sure she's ok until she finds her cousin." He had swiftly realized that Vince thought he had a claim on Tempest. Obviously when she'd decided she was finished with him, she hadn't let Vince in on it. But she was doing quite of job of it now, if Craig did say so himself. And dragging him right out into the middle with her. He wasn't happy about it, but he doubted very much she'd done it on purpose. After all, at first she had seemed totally wrapped up in his car, and its rare engine. In the end, it all came down to one thing. He wasn't letting Vince hurt the girl and he was hoping that it wouldn't come down to a fist fight in such a public place.

"The point here is that I can take care of myself. Have been for years and will be for some time into the future. But thank you for at least standing up for my right to chose instead of being dragged around the place as if by a caveman." She looked at Vince as she emphasized caveman.

"I didn't mean to imply you can't make up your own mind," Craig was quick to clarify.

"I know you didn't," Tempest reassured. "I appreciate finally finding someone who knows I'm able to make up my mind about what I want."

"So, how is everyone this evening?" Dom asked as he joined the group, slapping Vince on the back to make his presence known.

"I've been better, but that's starting to change," Tempest answered. "Dominic, this is Craig Everett. Craig, Dominic Toretto, Leon Strong, and Jesse Adams."

Everyone exchanged their 'nice to meet you's' as they tried to pretend Vince wasn't about to blow a gasket. It was hard to miss the fact that she hadn't introduced Vince to the newcomer. Tempest turned to Craig. "It was very nice to meet you Craig, and I'll likely see you around again on Saturday."

"Same to you, Tempest. I can't wait to see this Skyline."

Craig went back to his car. Tempest walked up to Jesse and leaned into him, suddenly disgusted with herself and feeling like she just might cry. She had finally met a nice guy, one who actually might want to keep her around for the long haul, treat her right, and accept the fact she had an intellect to match his own, and instead of putting the appropriate period to her 'thing' with Vince and seeing where things with this Craig guy could go, she still found herself bemoaning the lack of Vince's attention, pissed about the fact she had to use Craig Everett to snag his attention back from those sluts he was catting after. _You are _such_ a stupid bitch!_ Jesse wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze.

"You ok?" he asked under his breath.

"Yeah, or I will be. Let's go over by your car. I gotta get away from this for awhile."

She and Jesse headed for the Jetta.

"What the fuck, V? What were you thinkin'?"

"She tried to pick up that Craig guy! What do you mean what was _I_ thinking, Dom?"

"If you cared who she talked to Dawg, you shouldn't have let those three chicks hang off you in front of her."

Vince growled wordlessly at Leon when he was rebuked by his friend. "I forgot she was here."

"Yeah, I'm sure that's just what you want to say to her about the situation too," Dom said sarcastically. "You see why I was so against you'n her in the first place? You don't have the manners to treat one girl good for two whole weeks V."

"Shit, she should'a took it up with me in the first place, not wandered off to talk to a stranger."

"He seemed nice enough," Leon said. "His car'd be right up her alley."

Vince sighed after giving Leon a dirty look for having nice things to say about the blonde man it looked like Tempest had been trying to pick up right in front of him. "I told her that if she kept throwing this new asshole in my face I'd make life hard for him. She told me if I ever threatened her friends to try and make her tow my line again she'd ice me and find a place to bury the evidence."

Dom laughed. "That's kinda funny." _Trouble indeed_.

"Not when you consider the girl has better aim than I do and's been handling firearms since she was a kid."

"She's not likely to shoot you V. Ignore you for the rest of your life maybe," Leon grinned. "You're gonna be in the doghouse good. You pissed off T and made Mia right."

Vince groaned. "I did, didn't I?"

"Yeah," Dom answered, smirking. "Let's rejoin the ladies, who have congregated in a group with Tempest and Jesse and have been sending looks to kill us all ever since."

The three men dragged back over to the females of the team, where they stood with Jesse. Dom finally got called to a race, glad to go and get a break from watching everyone try to act normal and ignore the tension between Vince and Tempest.

"You wanna come listen to the scanners with me?" Leon asked Tempest as they started to move toward blocking off the street for the race.

"Sure," she answered and slid into the Skyline.

They drove to a street about half way down the race strip and blocked the mouth of it off on an angle. Leon kicked back in his seat and turned up the scanner. "So, you threatened to ice old Coyote, huh?" He watched a small smile lift the corners of her mouth.

"Yeah," she chuckled, finally breaking out of the depression she'd been in ever since it had dawned on her she'd allowed herself to be used just like a race skank. "The look on his face was worth all the shit up to and after."

"He likes you, you know? But he doesn't like it."

"That's a sentence that didn't make a hell of a lot of sense."

"Sure it does, just follow along. He likes you but it bugs him because he's not supposed to like you for you. He's supposed to like Mia that way. He's supposed to just sleep with other girls until she realizes what she's missing. He'd like to see you as Letty, but a version he's allowed to be friends with _and_ take to bed at night. But he can't slap you into that mould. He cares what you think and do, but he won't let himself admit it's because he just plain likes you. He took you to a fair and won you a stuffed panda. That's more than a little out of character for V."

"It's more than a little out of character for me to be some guy's 'for a good time, call'. I will not let him get his jollies with those bimbos here and then be his easy conquest for tonight so he doesn't have to work for it. Fuck, I'm better than that and I use to know it."

"Don't be too hard on yourself. We all felt the sparks from the second you started fighting with him in the garage."

"Much as it pains me to admit it, I should have listened to Dom in the first place. Getting involved with any of Jesse's friends wasn't a good idea. It's just gonna be awkward for the rest of the time I'm around now."

"How do you know you won't make up with him?"

"'Cause in his opinion I was in the wrong just because I went to talk to a guy who wanted to talk to me about things that we're both interested in? I missed being talked to, not talked at. That Craig guy cared what I had to say and what I thought. He engaged me in a conversation at my level. He didn't keep tryin' to dumb it down so little ol me could understand."

"He wouldn't be jealous of you talkin' to Craig if he didn't care."

"Sure he would. He's just like an Alley tom cat, marking his territory whether he really wants it or not. Not to mention what he said about hurting Craig because I dragged him into the situation. No one's gonna blackmail me by threatening other people in my life. Fuck that shit. I don't need it, and I damn well am equipped to make the issue go away if it comes to that."

"You ever take care of a problem that way before?"

"By shooting someone and finding a nice, outta the way place to bury the body? No. But I think I could if I had to, if I felt threatened enough."

The voice of the female police dispatcher came across the scanner before Leon could have a retort. Both occupants of the Skyline looked at the blinking red lights on the front and listened. "All available units called to Lakewood, robbery in progress, hostage situation." A chorus of officers answering the call came back. Leon picked his Nextel off the dash.

"Got a hot one in Lakewood, we're good."

"We're on?" Hector's voice came back.

"Yeah, it's on. Let's race."

"Alright," Hector answered. He raised his arms and started the race. The cars flashed by where Tempest and Leon sat before streaking on to the finish line. It wasn't long before word came back that Dom had won. They all headed back to the alley. They stood around and shot the breeze for awhile before some other people decided to race. None of the team was involved so they decided to stay around the alley and hang out with the other people who weren't going to line the strip. Tempest drifted off with Letty to talk to some people. She slowly found herself drifting off alone.

She didn't know anyone around and wasn't sure if she even wanted to anymore. The whole place felt so superficial to her now, she didn't even want to stick around. Alone in a crowd. Just as she was about to get into her thoughts even deeper, a cry came across the alley. "Cops! Cops!"

"Shit," she muttered. Just what she wanted to deal with. She watched everyone scramble for their cars, watched Dom, Letty, Mia, Jesse and Leon reach their cars and take off. She threw up her hands with a sigh. What was she, invisible? No one could remember they took her someplace tonight? The only car that hadn't left was the Maxima, which Vince was rapidly running towards. _No way, no how, not enough money in this world_, she told herself. _I'd rather get picked up and go to jail for the night than get back in his car._

Since the fight they'd shared, Tempest hadn't been far from his mind. So he wasn't really surprised to see Leon's tail lights end the line of the team's cars racing away, and see Tempest walking away from the alley, hands gesturing wildly as she talked to herself. It was like someone had asked 'what can I do to make his night even worse' and the answer had been 'make him her only avenue to get home without getting arrested.' He was sure it was going to go over real well when he tossed her in the car. There was no way he was going home without her. He'd be shot and she'd be in jail. Pissed at each other or no, she was getting in the car. He pulled up beside her. "Get in."

"There isn't anything on earth that could get me in your car," she snapped back, not even looking at him.

Since she kept on walking he kept on driving, coasting his car along beside her. "Goin' to jail over night isn't enough of an incentive for you to get in this car?"

"Rather do the time, thanks all the same."

He winced. "You'll worry Jesse. If I come home without you, and just lie and say I thought you were with one of them, Jesse'll just have to come looking for you. Get in the damn car."

Reminding her Jesse would worry, and feel guilty for abandoning her weakened her resolve. She was willing to go to jail without any ID on her person if it would just affect her. She wasn't willing to put Jesse through the guilt. And like the coyote his friends had nicknamed him after, he found her weak spot and went in for the kill. She stopped walking and he stopped the car. Once he had, she opened one of the back doors and slid in. If she had to be in his car, she didn't have to ride with him. Once the door was closed behind her, he took off like a shot, taking several quick turns to get them away from the area with the most heat. She looked out the side window as the scenery sped by.

"You gonna talk to me, or sit in the back seat and sulk?"

"Oh, I'm not sulking. I'm wallowing in self pity. There's a difference," she muttered.

"I don't follow you."

"Sulking would imply you had done something to put me in my place and I didn't like it. Wallowing in self pity implies that I hate what I've allowed myself to become and am busy wallowing in how it makes me feel so I'll know better for next time."

"What did you allow yourself to become?" he asked, against his better judgement.

"A whore," she answered, never taking her eyes off the view out the window.

He shook his head. "Where did you get that from?"

"Well, were we even friends, which I had assumed was what we were, you would not have asked me to come to an event with you, and proceeded to flaunt three other women in my face, all the while assuming I would still be going home with you. A woman who gives it up repeatedly just because it's there, and doesn't care if she's sharing the guy with umpteen-million other women is a whore. I never would have thought I would become one before meeting you. I seem to have been mistaken. But let me assure you I only make each mistake in my life once."

"It wasn't like that." He watched in the rearview as she leaned her forehead against the glass and closed her eyes.

"No? How was it like then? Come on now! I'm still waiting to have the big strong man tell poor little, stupid, female me how it was. 'Cause clearly I can't trust my own eyes to tell me how it is. I guess I just need a man to fill it all in for me."

"It was an accident! It wasn't like I was trying to pick up any of those girls. They're just race skanks. They hang off guys T, it's what they do. By the time I got away from them, I couldn't find you."

"I see," she answered, never opening her eyes or lifting her forehead off of the cool glass. "It took _you_ twenty minutes to shake off three chicks who never saw the inside of a gym in their lives and come find me? You, who will participate in a fist fight with your best friend over an argument about why you blew off work for a day, put up with three _girls_ holding you somewhere against your will for over twenty minutes? Because I was talking to Craig for at least that long before you came to make an asshole of yourself. Not to mention that you mustn't have been trying too hard to get clear of them if it took you twenty minutes to get away from the level of intelligence they'd be playing with. I mean, wouldn't simply telling them to go piss in the corner of a round room entertain them for days?"

If he hadn't been so angry as it was over the whole situation, he would have had to laugh at her question. She was likely right. But he was in no mood to joke about it with her at the moment. "Ok, shit! What'd you want? Blood? I got caught up in the routine. That's just same shit, different race for me. Those girls are always around and normally I chat them up. What'd you want me to say? They started talkin', I pretended to listen, and I lost track of time."

When he would have to swear he saw a tear roll down her cheek he knew that no matter what she wanted him to say, what he had said had been the wrong thing.

"I'm glad to know I'm so important and memorable that my own cousin left me for the cops to pick up and the guy I was sleeping with several times a day for the last four days forgot I was with him the second I was outta his direct line of sight."

"Fuck me," he growled under his breath. He couldn't find the right thing to say to her to save his life. "I didn't mean it like that."

"You don't seem to know exactly what you mean tonight. I think it has something to do with not knowing what to say to magically make the situation all better." She opened her eyes to look out the window. "Where the fuck are we? We should be home by now."

"We should but we're not. We're not going home until we work some of this shit out."

"There's nothing to work out. I was easy tail for you and you helped me see it for what it was and now I'm not willing to have any of it. Take me home. I'm sure at least one of the three hos you're so used to will be around Dom's."

He shook his head but fell silent. He wasn't trying to reason with her any further while driving with her in the back seat when no one was in the front. No one was where she belonged. He turned the car toward the coast.

When everyone arrived home it was to the realization they had all assumed Tempest was with one of the others. Dom looked around at everyone. "What do you mean no one knows where she is?"

"I thought she was with Leon," Jesse answered, looking frightened. "The last time I saw her she was off with Leon."

"I thought she was with Jesse," Leon admitted.

"We thought she was with Leon or Jesse," Mia said, indicating her statement included Letty.

"I thought she was with the two of you," Dom told the girls. "Where's Vince?"

"Never made it home," Leon said.

"Well, we can hope she's with him, I guess," Dom said, rubbing his head in agitation at the same time. "And that they're not killing each other someplace."

"I don't think she'd go with Vince. I honestly think she'd rather go with the cops at this point," Jesse said. "I better go try to find her."

"I'll go," Dom said. He felt responsible. He was supposed to look out for his team, and while she was staying in his house, that included Tempest. Like her or not, want her there or not.

"Why don't we call Vince and see if he has her before we go searching all over town?" Leon asked.

"Finally, one good idea in a night of horrible ones," Dom said, trying to lighten the mood. It didn't work. He picked up the phone and dialled Vince's cell.

Vince heard his phone ringing and pulled it out of his pocket. He checked the call ID and saw the house number. "Fuck it," he snarled. He knew he'd have to answer it. He took a deep breath to try and calm down a notch before answering. "What?" he roared. Clearly his relaxation technique left something to be desired.

"Where the fuck are you?"

When Dom's question came across the line, tinged with genuine worry, he sighed. Of course the team was worried because he hadn't gone straight home to check in. "I'm in the car, getting away from the cops."

"She with you?"

"Yeah," Vince answered. He wanted to add a tirade about everyone else forgetting her when they knew she wasn't speaking to him, but he didn't think it would go over so well when he'd basically forgotten her too.

"When you comin' back here?"

"Dunno. When I do. Later." He didn't wait for Dom's answer. He just hit end, powered the phone off and chucked it in the empty passenger seat.

"She's with him. He sounded pissed, but at least the cops didn't get them."

"So what now?"

"We have our party. She's a big girl as she's always tellin' us. She can handle herself around Vince. She already proved that."

The team joined their guests. Only Jesse felt really bad about basically throwing Tempest to the wolves, or to the Coyote, as the case was. But as he sucked back Corona he slowly started to relax past it. She could take care of herself, he just knew that in this case she wouldn't want to.


	13. Of Hypocrites and Sweet Little Lies

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**  
By – _TempestRaces_  
Chapter 13 – **Of Hypocrites and Sweet Little Lies**

Vince stopped the car beside the billboard at the little beach they had hung out at as kids to do their drinking before they were legal, among other things they had been doing that they hadn't wanted the adults in their lives to know about. He set the parking brake and got out of his car.

Knowing what he was going to do, Tempest locked her door. She hadn't counted on him having the keyless entry clicker with him, however. She couldn't keep locking the door faster than he could unlock it remotely, though she did try. He got the door open and hauled her out of the back seat, their foolish battle of wills with the door lock taking his temper up from a slow boil to a simmer. "You're gonna come talk to me, so you might as well walk so I don't have to carry you over my shoulder."

"You have nothing to say that I want to hear."

"Guess you're gonna hear some things you don't wanna then, because you are gonna listen to me."

"Not if I can help it," she told him before she broke loose from his hold and started walking toward the highway.

"Where you goin?"

"Where ever I have to go to find a phone and have Jess come get me."

"By now Jess likely isn't in any state to drive."

"Yeah, because he's worried about me being upset with him about him not waiting for me, and worried about me being alone with you."

"He damn well should be worried about what's gonna happen to him for forgetting you in the shuffle. I'm gonna kick his ass."

"Everyone loves a hypocrite," she answered with a sarcastic snort.

"Come again?"

She spun around to face him, eyes snapping green fire his way. "You're pissed at Jess for forgetting to wait for me when he was scrambling away from the cops and he's not used to me being around without my own ride, but it was cool for you to forget you brought me in your car after asking me to go with you, while you practically made out with three girls on the hood of said car while I was right beside the passenger side door. After how things have been between us since I got here." She finally met his eyes. The look on her face was incredulous. She clearly couldn't believe he could honestly be so obtuse, or self-righteous. "Jesse likely knows his car isn't as fast as everyone else's, and given he's kinda nervous going to begin with, I can easily justify what he did. What's your excuse?"

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair in agitation. He remembered the look on her face while she fixed it for him, and the look on her face after he kissed her. It should have been such a good night, ending happily in his room some time around three am. He only had himself to blame for how it was ending instead, a fact which made him very frustrated. He wasn't getting any from her tonight, and if he decided to get some elsewhere, she'd likely fillet him alive. With Letty's help. He couldn't win. Therefore, he was going to have to try his best to fix this situation, before it got any farther out of hand. He walked up to her and took her by the tops of both arms, holding her gently and caressing her skin with his thumbs in slow circles. "I fucked up. I don't know what else to say."

"Nothing, Vince. Don't say a word. Just take me home," she bit out, keeping her eyes on her feet and effectively shutting him out.

"Please don't do this."

"Don't do what?" she snapped.

"Stay mad at me for the rest of your visit."

"I'm not mad at you, strangely enough. Well, maybe a little that you dragged me here against my will. But mostly, I'm mad at myself. I shoulda known fuckin' better, but I didn't. I mean, I had to go and talk to another guy before you started to give a fuck you didn't know where I was."

"That's not true. I realized you were gone and then I found you with that guy. It wasn't you being with that guy that made me go looking for you."

"Whatever." She shook her head, unwilling and unable to see his position. Unable to believe him. "I'm cold and tired. Can we go home now please?"

"If you're cold I'll warm you up, but we can't go home until you forgive me for being an asshole."

"I told you I wasn't mad at you. There's nothing to forgive, but if you think there is, you're forgiven. There, can we go now?" She shivered.

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his chest, resting his chin on her head. "I'm sorry," he sighed.

"What for now?" If she just believed him, she might even find it inside herself to do it. Forgive him. But she wasn't sure from his tone whether he was really sorry, or upset that he'd caused himself an inconvenience.

"For making you feel so bad. We _are _friends T. I know I didn't act like it tonight. Maybe it's no excuse but I'm just a creature of habit. I shoulda known better and I shoulda paid more attention to you, but I fucked up."

She stood stiff in his arms. Not sorry for doing what he did. Sorry that what he had done had made her feel bad, and she was quite sure that translated into sorry now that you feel bad you won't want anything to do with me tonight. He wasn't getting off the hook that easily. No sirree bob. "I'm glad you realized it. If you ever find another girl stupid enough to allow you in her life, you'll know for next time what not to say and how not to act," she said. Her tone was flat, filled with anger and disgust.

"What the fuck do you want from me?" he roared, pushing her away from him and holding her at arm's length in front of himself. Her need to continually act like what he had done was the worst thing anyone had ever done was getting frustrating. He shook her before he realized what he was doing and stopped. The way her hurt green eyes shone told him loud and clear her hold over her temper and her angry, hurt tears was tenuous at best. He was fairly sure he didn't really like himself in that moment. At least he hadn't hit her, but holding her against her will was tantamount to it.

"I want you to take me home," she ground out, low and angry. It was an order, not a request; a fact that showed through clearly.

Guilt curled in his belly over how he'd made her feel and mixed with his anger and frustration over her continuing need to ignore everything he said, until it expanded in an explosive mixture inside his gut. He snarled, "Fine, fuck you! You won't believe I'm sorry, you won't listen to me, fine. Fuckin' so be it. It's not worth this much frustration!"

"That's pretty much what I thought," she replied in a small voice.

"Fuck!" he exclaimed. He kept saying the wrong things to her. She was never going to forgive him after he'd said what he'd said. Telling someone you were trying to make up with 'fuck you' and that they weren't worth the trouble wasn't exactly the right foot to stand on. He took another deep breath, tried counting to ten. It didn't help that much. "Come on. You win. Let's go home," he growled. He walked over to the passenger side of the car and opened the front door. There was no way he was driving her around in the back seat like she was a child. After watching her slide onto the seat he closed the door, slamming it as hard as he could. When he saw her flinch away from the window he started around to the other side. "Fuck!" he yelled at himself. Was there something he could do right this evening? He got in the car and started for home, his driving fast, erratic and jerky. His engine was roaring, throttle full open as he raced home, trying to work off some of his anger and frustration with the speed. She curled up in her seat and looked out the side window the whole time. The look on her face reflected in the glass made him feel even more like an asshole than he had. She was hurt, pissed off, and scared and he knew it, though she had managed to hide her fear well. He kept wanting to say something to her, but he didn't know what to say beyond sorry again and he knew it wouldn't cut it.

They parked at the end of the driveway and walked into the house. Dom looked up when he heard the front door open, watched them walk in and watched as Tempest slipped away as quickly as she could without running and disappeared into the crowd. He watched Vince walk his way. "Take it she still ain't talkin' to you?"

"No. Shit I fucked up."

"So what? She won't talk to you for the rest of the time she's here and then she goes home. What'd you care?"

"Dunno, but I do. She's important to Jesse."

"Still, that ain't gonna change over you. So why sweat it?"

He could tell Dom wasn't trying to make him feel better, but rather to rub in how right he'd been all along. Dom didn't like Tempest and he didn't like the idea of him sleeping with her either, and it wasn't a fact he'd ever tried to hide from the rest of the world. But after all he'd been through already tonight, the last thing Vince was ready to handle was another fight, especially not with Dom. "I need a drink," he stated, instead of touching Dom's last comment.

Dom shrugged before he answered, "Beer in the fridge."

Vince wandered toward the kitchen. He found Tempest talking to Leon, a drink in her hand. He ignored them, figuring that was what she would want, and got a beer out of the fridge. He wandered back into the living room and sat down before picking up his guitar and picking at it aimlessly.

Leon watched as Tempest drained her third very strong drink made since she had arrived in the kitchen, and started to mix herself another. It was easy to see she was upset from the lines of tension in her face and the strain around her eyes. In short, her grip on reality was tenuous at best, and he really didn't think she was following the best path toward dealing with her issues.

"You sure you should be drinkin' like that right now?" he asked gently. "You're still kinda shook up girl, and all that liquor isn't gonna help."

"I'm fine. I just need to take the edge off."

"I think you had enough for that. You're well on your way to sloshed."

She smiled, the first he'd seen on her face since they'd talked in his car. "That's the plan, Stan."

"Be better if you didn't."

"Maybe, but I'm not all that good at doing what's good for me, if tonight has illustrated anything for me that's it."

"Remember what I told you in the car. Just keep it in mind."

"I will." She drained her drink with a grimace and started making another right away. She wasn't ready to tell Leon or anyone else about the fight she'd had with Vince after he rescued her from the cops. She knew without being told that it would go from being between him and her into being between him and her and Dom and Leon and Jesse, not to mention Letty, and Mia would then have every right to say 'I told you so', and none of that was anything she was equipped to deal with right now. So she was going to drink and keep on drinking until she didn't have to remember the fact that she'd been scared of Vince. That his fury had actually made her afraid of what he might be capable of doing to her. She smiled at Leon one last time before starting into the living room. She found Jesse standing with Mia. "Hey cuz," she said.

Jesse hugged her. "I'm sorry I took off. I thought you were still with Leon."

"It's my fault Jess. I wasn't with anyone. I wanted to be alone for a minute so I wandered off on my own and when people started to run for cover I was too far away to holler at you guys that I needed a ride too."

"You work anything out with V?"

She shook her head and took a huge gulp of her drink to hide her discomfort.

"How many of those have you had?"

"This is five, I think."

"You up to your old tricks?"

"Nope, not this time."

"Please be careful T. I don't wanna end up taking you to have your stomach pumped."

"I'll stop after this one, or maybe one more."

He nodded.

"I'll catch you around, ok?" she asked, and without waiting for an answer wandered off into the crowd.

"She's pretty messed up," Mia observed.

"Yeah. She's being hard on herself for things."

"Why? She didn't do anything wrong. She's just finding out the hard way that Vince is a prick first and everything else second."

"She might not have done anything wrong, but she thought that they were friends. Well, friends with an unconventional relationship. Now she has herself convinced that he was just using her, and that she shouldn't have allowed it to happen."

"That's what I've been saying all along."

"But it's not true. He does like her as a friend, and maybe more. But he's too stubborn and set in his ways to allow himself to see it. It'll work itself out, I just don't know how." Jesse walked away to get himself another drink.

Tempest didn't keep up her end of the deal with Jesse. She ended up having three or maybe four more drinks and by the time two am rolled around she was so wrecked she could hardly stand. When she caught herself giggling at a very lame joke one of the wannabes told her as they danced together, she knew it was time to call it a night. She decided it was time to take herself off to bed before she passed out someplace upstairs or made another mistake that might make her life even more fucked up than it already was. Like encourage the loser she was dancing with to keep flirting with her in front of Vince, which she knew wasn't a great idea. She was just too far gone to care anymore. But that didn't mean she wanted to see some drunk, vapid racer wannabe get the life beaten out of him. It was obvious, even to her in the state she was in, that Vince was just itching for an excuse to beat the tar out of someone and since he couldn't beat it out of her, one of the guys getting her attention would make a good substitute.

When she got downstairs she changed into a pair of terry sweat shorts and a tank top before curling up in a ball on the couch. She passed out almost immediately. She woke up half an hour later with an urgent need to throw up. She heard the sounds of people who weren't alone or doing any sleeping in their beds out of both Leon's room and Jesse's as she raced into the bathroom. She managed to slam the door shut behind herself before she was violently ill. With a groan she stumbled back to her couch and fell onto it. Her head was spinning so badly it felt like the room was actually in motion around her while she stayed still, and she wasn't sure how much longer she could wait to go throw up again. She definitely didn't want to be hearing what she was hearing out of the two rooms with closed doors. _Now Vince just has to take one of his little girlfriends down here and my night will be complete_, she thought sanguinely.

On that note she got up to run to the bathroom again. She finished up and went back to the couch to lay in the semi darkness in abject misery, shivering. The door at the top of the stairs was open and light and noise from the party which was still going on drifted down to wash over her. She thanked god for small miracles that it practically drowned out the sound of Jesse and Leon doing what they were doing. The walls had to be like paper. She drifted in and out of consciousness, always shivering. She wished her teeth would just stop chattering for thirty seconds so she might just fall asleep.

Vince gave up on the party around quarter to three. How he hadn't killed anyone he didn't know. Mostly everyone was gone home and none of his team was anywhere to be found, other than Mia, who was kicking people out gently so she could lock up. He wasn't yet sure how he'd managed to watch 'the fuckin' bitch'—as he'd spent the night calling her in his own head—dance with other guys and let them all live. He hauled ass down the stairs, only to hear what Tempest had heard, his two friends getting lucky in their rooms. That served to rub in his idiocy to him nicely. Then he looked at the couch and found where 'the fuckin' bitch' had gone.

She was so pale her skin looked translucent, breathing shallowly and shivering as she lay on her side, facing into the room and curled into a little ball on the couch, which she hadn't even bothered to unfold. "Great," he muttered. He'd spent the night calling her names in his head, and she'd spent the night getting shit faced beyond sense and he hadn't even spent enough time really looking at her to notice. He'd seen her rubbing his nose in the fact she could pick up other guys and had looked right past what he'd made her deal with, the hurt and the anger, the doubts and no doubt a touch of fear too. He walked over to her and crouched down beside her with a sigh. _Asshole!_ "Temp, you ok?"

"What?" she mumbled in a thready voice. She didn't open her eyes to look at him with her question.

"You ok?"

"I don't think so," she admitted.

Her voice sounded weak, and nothing could hide the upset. _Fuckin' Asshole!_ "How much did you drink?"

"A lot."

He tried to preserve his patience. "How much is a lot?"

"I don't know, I was drunk for the last part of it. Maybe three quarters of a quart. A bit more," she whispered.

"Than shouldn't you be fine? You drank more than that on Saturday."

"I didn't drink it all in just under an hour on Saturday." Even drunk she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of knowing how she'd kept up with him.

"Jesus Trouble." He ran a hand through his hair. He knew she had done something to keep up with him on Saturday, he just couldn't figure what. But now she hadn't done whatever it was she did that allowed her to drink more than she physically should have been possible to do. She had simply downed enough liquor put her in serious danger if it was all still in her system. And it was all his fault. "You throw up?"

"Twice," she answered, trying hard not to break down and cry in front of him. There was nothing she wanted less. There was nothing to make you see your own stupidity like getting shit faced and ending up with nothing but time on your hands to analyze your every word and action over the course of a whole disastrous event. Her whole evening just kept replaying over and over in her mind. She couldn't make it stop, and it just made her think over and over again how singularly stupid she had been to allow herself to get involved with Vince, knowing what she had about him from the start, both from Jesse's antidotes about his friend, and what she'd seen and inferred first hand. And now there he was, seeing her in the glorious aftermath of her attempt to deal with what he'd done. _Just fuckin' super_!

He felt her forehead, brushing her hair off her face as he did so. Her skin felt like ice. She was in a cold sweat. "Why are you so cold?" Was being cold when it was anything but in the room a sign of alcohol poisoning?

"Dunno."

"Come on. You're staying in my room tonight."

"No way," she seemed to wake up a bit more when he told her that, almost seemed to panic. "I'm ok." She was quick to try and reassure him. "Just gimme an hour or two and I'll be fine. Just like last time."

After the way he'd acted to her at the beach he couldn't fault her for it. He could and did fault himself, but it wasn't the time to deal with his own feelings and he knew it. He'd scared her and he knew he deserved her fear and distrust. But he wasn't going to leave her to choke to death in her sleep either. "No you're not. You're freezing and I'd rather you were somewhere someone was keeping an ear out for you. Either you put up with me watching out for you or you let me take you to a hospital. Take your pick."


	14. Of Predators and Prey

AN: Ok, so I likely should have edited some of this chapter out, but I didn't. It's likely not all that far above M, if it even is, and the parts that I feel maybe should have been removed are important to the story, as far as I'm concerned, so they stay. As always, please lemme know what you think. I crave critique so feel free to bring it on.

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 14- **Of Predators and Prey**

"Either way, before we decide I need the bathroom again." She scrambled unsteadily to her feet and rushed the washroom. Despite the closed door he walked in, helped her marshal her hair while she heaved, helped her brush her teeth at her insistence and made her drink two glasses of water. "Its just gonna come up again," she insisted.

"So be it. You need to get some water into your system. Now, bed for you."

She gave up on fighting him. He was such a dominate personality she knew that as weak as she was feeling, she couldn't fight him off. He would get his way. Either she would have to allow him to take her to an ER or allow him to baby sit her for the night. She allowed him to help her into his room and tuck her under the blankets before he changed into a pair of shorts himself and slid in the other side.

He could tell she was still shivering. He came up on his side behind her and tucked her against him, his chin on the top of her head. "Better?"

She didn't answer. Leon was right; she shouldn't have drunk all that liquor. She just felt worse, now that she couldn't prevent herself from thinking back, and couldn't even slink off alone to deal with her feelings. It was so confusing in her state to have the man who'd been so very cruel to her mere hours before decide to be so very kind to her now. She started to cry, losing her battle against tears against her will. She tried to stop, but it was like the more she tried to stop the harder she cried. She wanted her mother! She barely stopped herself from crying her want out loud. Second place to her mom would have been Jesse, but there was no way she was getting Vince to go interrupt what Jesse was doing just to come and see her have a drunken breakdown.

When her sobbing started he forcefully bit back a curse. He wished someone would teach him how to deal with the waterworks of a female he really didn't want to see hurting. It wasn't that he ever knew how to deal with a crying female, but it was a million times worse when it was someone he cared for, and someone _he_ had caused to cry. He also figured he felt like ten times the asshole because he knew crying wasn't something she did. She wasn't one of those women who used her tears to get her way or one of those women who didn't have control over her emotions either. Mia cried over every happy moment and every upset. It was like she had no control over her emotions. Tempest normally had a stony control over hers. He had already seen her upset and angry and her normal reaction was to either mouth off until she was in even more trouble or get this icy cold, obstinate look on her face, like 'what the fuck do you want me to do about it?' All he knew was if she didn't stop soon, he was in danger of joining her out of a sheer sense of helplessness. Ok, maybe that was overstating it. But he didn't know what he'd do if she kept sobbing brokenly, like nothing would ever be right in her world again. Seeing how as he knew it was all his fault. "Aw, please don't cry Temp. I can't stand it." He rubbed her stomach idly in circles as she sobbed. Where the admission came from, he didn't know. He consoled himself she wasn't likely to remember very much of her evening by the time she woke up. "You crying about being sick, or about what happened tonight?"

"Both," she mumbled through her tears.

He sighed. There was only one way that he might possibly fix what he'd broken and he didn't like it. Not one bit. "I didn't start out to hurt you. I wish you'd believe me."

"I do. It doesn't make it any better that I allowed myself to pretend things were different." She had little control over what left her mouth. She was too drunk and too upset to think before she spoke. She knew that she hadn't been intending to give him any more information about how she felt. But in the insular world of her present, with only her upset and his presence for company, she didn't know how to keep her words in check.

He sighed at her admission. She was too astute to lie to, and it was one thing he'd picked up on about her right off. She was in tune to the moods of people around her to a scary degree. If he tried to shit her she'd know, even in her condition. But he wasn't about to tell her what he'd told himself either. That he'd just sleep with her while it was convenient and be glad when she was gone. No, that reassuring little lie would stay a mental trick of his own. So his only open avenue was honesty. Not what she had told herself was the score, and not the story he was using to keep himself from panicking about reality either.

"I'm not gonna insult your intelligence and tell you that I wasn't always counting on the fact you were too smart to want to try and keep this thing with us going once you went home. I knew the whole three thousand miles between us thing wasn't something you would think was an overcomeable obstacle, that much is true. But I like being with you Trouble. You're smart and funny and the way you won't take my shit keeps me on my toes. I never intended to fuck up this bad with you. I thought once you went home we _would_ still be friends. I thought I could make it work." Female friends he knew how to have. He and Letty had a great relationship. It was this something more he had with Tempest that had him thrown. When his words didn't have his desired effect on her he kissed her shoulder. "I'm sorrier than you'll ever know Trouble. I never had a girl who I was sleeping with who was my friend too before and I'm just as outta water about how to act about it as you are. I know I didn't do very good, but I been tryin. Please stop crying. You're killin' me." What could he say to make her stop? "I'll make it all up to you tomorrow. Well, when you're done bein' sick. Ok?"

"You scared the hell outta me tonight Vince, and I don't know how you'll ever make that up to me."_En vino et veretas, didn't they say_? She hadn't ever intended to tell him that, but there she went anyway. She wasn't scared of anything, at least as far as she had ever intended to allow him to be concerned. But, truth be told, she thought perhaps telling him about it was one way she could hurt him back in some small measure. Her personality had a streak of mean a mile wide when she was hurting, and revenge for wrongs done to her was high on her list of priorities most times.

"I know I did. But I never meant to, and I'd never hurt you."

"You did," she reminded. He wasn't getting off that easy either. He had hurt both her feelings and her skin, and he wasn't to be allowed to pretend otherwise, not even simply between him and her.

"I know. I know," he repeated on an angry growl directed at himself. "I was angry and I grabbed you and I never shoulda put my hands on you when I was that pissed off. The heights of angry you push me to never stop surprising me so I shoulda known better than to ever touch you in that mood. But I'd never haul off and hit you, and I swear it. I don't know if you'll believe me or not, but when I told you way back when that I don't hold with hitting girls, I meant it. You always knew I had a big mouth, Trouble. But when it comes down to it, that's all it is when it comes to doing anything physical against you or any other woman. I might talk a good game to scare you, but I wouldn't ever really do it. I promise you that. We might yell at each other until we wake the house up, or scream ourselves hoarse, but I'll never, ever hit you or put my hands on you in anger again. I swear. You couldn't be any more angry with me over what I did than I am with myself."

She sniffled and her crying started to calm. He had sounded honest. _But you're loaded_, she reminded herself. He was still trying to make her feel better, wrapped around her so she could get warm, telling her things she knew he wouldn't ever want to say out loud, let alone to her. In some small way, he had bared his soul to her, and it wasn't something he did often, if his lack of grace with doing so now was any indication. After the fight they'd had on the beach he could have left her to be miserable alone on the couch, but he hadn't. He'd chosen to finally make a sincere apology instead, saying things that he would hate to say out loud to anyone. Maybe a girl did have to give a man like him a bit more slack than other guys. If she wanted him to figure out what he was missing while living his life in half measures waiting for the real thing to begin, she had to hang around him to show him what he could have. That certainly didn't mean he was forgiven. She had some thinking to do about it. Some sober thinking. Thus, she had some thinking to do after she stopped wanting to die when she woke up in the morning. Or afternoon, at the rate she was going.

"I'll think on it tomorrow. After I'm done being sick."

He chuckled softly. Her watery, yet still distinctly annoyed answer amused him. She was far from ok with him, but she was already thinking, and with her, an appeal to her analytical mind was the best course to take. "Ok, good enough. I'll be right here, ok. If you need anything and I'm asleep, wake me. I mean it."

She didn't answer, she just allowed herself to pass out again. She did feel better being held against his strength than she had suffering in the noisy, cold living room on the scratchy couch. She knew she'd analyze everything more when she woke up sober, but for now she was just going to let him hold her against his heartbeat and sleep, feeling safe even though she knew she shouldn't. Even though with him was the last place she should ever feel safe again. It was just too bad her tired mind didn't totally see it that way anymore.

He felt her go slack in his arms and heard her breathing even out as she fell into sleep. He relaxed with a sigh himself before kissing her bare shoulder again. Someday soon he might have to look closer at why he cared. Why he didn't just allow it to stand with them not liking each other for the rest of her stay. But he couldn't and wouldn't do that. He hoped, when she saw the surprise he'd been planning for her while her and the boys had been building her engine she'd know he never could have planned to treat her the way he had. He fell asleep.

He woke up around four thirty, woke Tempest up against her will and made her drink three more glasses of water. She fought him tooth and nail over it too, but he won in the end. He was hoping to get as much into her as he could while she was still going to be able to go back to sleep and let it work into her system. He knew it would help her not be as miserable the next day. He took up his position behind her with one arm under her neck and the other draped over her hip after she finished her water and fell back asleep with her. When he woke up the next day he was all alone in his bed. He rolled onto his back with a groan and tried to remember why that was a bad thing.

_Tempest_!

Where was she? She should have been sleeping, or very pissed off and miserable to be awake. He looked over at the clock. It was just after eleven. Then he heard feminine laughter. He got up out of bed, trying to puzzle out the laughter. There was no way that there should be any female in the house in a good enough mood to laugh. He paused in the open door of his room.

Tempest and Leon had been playing PlayStation. She was still wearing her little cami and short terry shorts she'd slept in. Leon was sporting a pair of boxers with the Nissan logo on them all over and not much else. The laughter was due to the fact that when she had kicked his ass at Gran Turismo 2, Leon had decided to tickle her to get revenge.

She was struggling underneath him, eyes screwed closed and laughing frantically as she tried to get away. "Stop being a sore loser!" she gasped out around her laughter.

"You cheated!" Leon accused, lifting up her cami and blowing a raspberry against her stomach. Vince felt his gut tighten and he fought to remember Leon looked at her like a relative. He didn't need to be jealous over Leon having his hands and mouth on her. Not that he was sure he had the right to be jealous anyway.

She laughed even harder until she was gasping for breath. "Get off me Leo! You lost fair and square and I don't want to have to hurt you!"

"That I'd like to see," Leon said and blew another raspberry just under her navel. "Cheaters deserve to be punished."

"I didn't cheat. I'm just better'n you. Let me up."

"You must have the Devil's own luck. Twice in a row you shoulda been curled up in a corner wishin' to die," Vince broke into their play. "And I find you doin' just fine instead."

They both looked up at him in two different levels of nervousness. Leon looking mildly uncomfortable at being caught putting his lips on Tempest, and Tempest looking very uncomfortable as she looked up from her prone position. Leon spoke first. "I fed her my hangover remedy at ten when she got up."

"It's the nastiest thing I've ever fuckin' seen too."

"It worked, didn't it?"

"Yeah. Still tasted like ass."

Leon started tickling her again. "Don't insult the reason why you aren't tied to the porcelain god!"

"I'm sorry to the bucket of green slop you made me drink!" she managed to get out around her giggling.

"I let you put some of that protein shit in it so you wouldn't have to eat breakfast, didn't I?"

"Thank you Leon," she chirped and kissed him smack on the lips with more noise and enthusiasm than was required. She laughed happily as he turned bright red. "You're like the loud, obnoxious cousin I never had and never wanted."

"Aw thanks gorgeous," he drawled out in a typical Leon growl. "You're like the annoying little cousin I always wanted. I never had anyone to throw worms at, or put frogs down the dress of."

"I used to dig up worms at my grandmother's house and make worm houses for them in ice-cream containers with Jess. I also never minded frogs or snakes."

"Is there a way to offend you?"

"Yeah, I can't stand a guy who thinks he looks better'n me in a dress."

"You got no cause for worry around here. I guarantee none of us are gonna put a dress on, let alone think we look better'n you in one. But seriously, have _you_ ever worn a dress?"

"I went to prom. I didn't have a lot of choice. I also wore one to graduation. And a few times at Halloween. And I have one of those little black dresses every woman is required to own. I don't get a lot of reasons to wear it though."

"You bring it with you?" Vince watched as she tipped her head back to look at him upside down.

"I think so. I packed a lot into those two bags. Surprised myself."

He nodded. "Well, if you're all up, we should get ready and head to the garage."

"The garage?"

"Yeah, it's a work day," Vince reminded.

Leon groaned.

"It ain't gonna be a work day for me until two weeks from now when I'm due back at work."

"You wanna finish your car and try it, don't you?" Vince questioned.

"Oh yeah, the Skyline." Tempest hopped up off the floor. "How much is left to do, Leo?"

"I dunno. Jesse left to go finish it at like nine, so could be done by now."

"Jess isn't in his room sleeping?" Tempest asked, incredulous her cousin got up early after a night of drinking.

"Nope. Come on green eyes, let's get down there," Leon said to Tempest, pushing her toward where Vince was standing.

"Why're you pushin' me farther into the house if you wanna leave now?"

"Cause you can't wear your jammies to the shop and all your shit is in there," Leon retorted, pointing into Vince's room.

"Oh yeah, I guess it is," she admitted. Leon didn't stop pushing her toward the bedroom. "Shit, I'll get dressed already. Gimme a minute." She left Leon and Vince standing together in their boxers in the living room when she closed Vince's own door in his face.

"Guess there's still trouble in paradise, huh dawg?" Leon teased. He realized he likely shouldn't be teasing on the subject when Vince's expression turned grim.

"I was pretty shitty to her after I picked her up in the alley last night. Dunno if she's going to get over it or not." But he did know that he wasn't ever going into the details with his friends. If she told them, there was nothing he could do about it. It was her story to tell too, after all. But he was never volunteering the information.

"She stayed in your room last night," Leon probed.

"I didn't give her a choice. I told her it was either stay where I could watch her or go get checked out for alcohol poisoning. She allowed me to decide for her and I picked just putting her to bed. I don't know that it means she's over anything. She was too drunk—stupidly drunk—to have too much to say about it."

"She'll come around."

"We'll see." Vince shrugged.

"Wait 'til she sees what you did to the Skyline."

"Well, that could go one of two ways. Either she'll love it, or she'll be pissed I just up and did it without asking her first or giving her any input."

"I think it's pretty clear how her tastes run. What you told me about sounds just like something she'd pick on her own. Besides, who's gonna argue with a Stitch—"

Tempest leaving Vince's room dressed in a clean tank and a pair of jeans cut Leon off. "Ok guys, get ready already. I'm ready to hear my car with three inch pipes."

"I'm ready to hear you dump boost on that new blow off valve," Leon said, grinning. "But if your car takes mine I'm never gonna live it down."

"You gonna try and race me Leon?"

"We'll see. I dunno if my male pride could take the hit if you beat me."

"You've got enough ego for ten guys, so I'm sure you'd be ok. Come to think of it, with the exception of Jesse, most of the guys around here have overgrown egos."

"Guilty," Leon admitted, not looking too chagrined over it at all. "I'll go chuck some gear on."

"Me too," Vince nodded with a look between Tempest and Leon.

Vince and Leon left her to her own devices in the living room while they changed. They arrived out of their rooms at almost the same time.

"You guys co-ordinate that shit, or did it just work out that way?"

"Just a co-incidence," Leon answered and ran up the stairs.

Vince followed him, leaving Tempest to bring up the rear. By the time they made it out of the house Leon was zipping off down the street. Vince suppressed his groan. Now she was going to think he'd put his friend up to taking off so she'd have no choice but ride with him. He decided to try and head off the situation before it could become one. "I didn't tell him to take off. I'm sorry you're stuck with me."

"It's just a ride to the shop Vince. Don't get your panties in a twist over it."

"You wanna drive her?" Vince surprised himself by asking, pointing at the gleaming blue sedan that was his pride. He thought that if she was in control of the car, she might feel in control over the whole situation and it would give her confidence to be in his presence alone. He was guessing his car didn't have a lot of happy memories for her.

"You sure?" she asked, her head cocked to the side. Every time he looked at his car, or touched it, or drove it, she could see how much love he had for it. It was obviously his most treasured possession in his life, his guitar a distant second.

"Yeah. I've seen you with the Skyline. I think you can be trusted with this." He tossed her the keys. Maybe she could be trusted with it. Maybe she was a very competent driver. Well, for a female. But it was still going to be hard for him to get in the passenger seat of his own car. No one had driven it but him since he bought it. Well, Jesse one time, but only because he had to in order to tune it.

She caught the keys and opened the driver's side door, sliding into the driver's seat and adjusting it to allow her shorter legs to find the pedals. She laughed at his wince. "It'll take you all day to get it back the way it should be, won't it?"

"Yeah," he sighed.

She laughed louder. "Good." She glanced at Vince after backing down the drive. He looked awfully serious all of a sudden.

"T?"

"Yeah?" she asked, sliding the gearshift from first to second with her eyes on the road.

"Are we anything near cool?"

"Yeah. Near cool. But we ain't there yet."

He chuckled. "So fuckin' up all my carefully arranged interior isn't revenge enough?"

"Not quite, no. I'll think of some more things I can do that'll help make me feel vindicated though."

"I hate the sound of that."

"You should. I might be feeling like having a slave for a day tomorrow. _Where_ could I find one?"

"What kind of slave?" Vince asked, his eyes narrowed in question.

"Not the kind you wish," she answered with a smirk.

"Whether you want me to be that kind of slave to you or not, I am. If you didn't want me to be you never shoulda let me find out how good we were together." He watched as she blushed. Her slight discomfort with the topic took some of the sting out of admitting what he had to her.

She didn't miss his use of were instead of are. He didn't talk about how good they were together in bed in the present tense, but past. It seemed he was convinced that he'd messed up with her bad enough that their sexual relationship was over. She wasn't sure if he was right or not, yet. She decided not to fill him in about that revelation though. He could find out she wanted him again if she decided she did some time. It wasn't like he was likely to turn her down. She didn't know what possessed her, but she was going to ask him anyway, because she wanted to know. "Were we that good together? Be honest, was the sex we had any better than sex with any other girl for you?"

He rubbed the back of his neck in discomfort. He didn't want to answer honestly, but he was going to have to. He owed her that much, much as he hated to think on it. "Yeah, it was. For me anyway. There was an element of me giving a fuck about you that changed it, I think. You?"

"Well, in all honesty I didn't have that much to compare it to, but I thought so to."

"Come again. You don't have a lot to compare it to?"

It was her turn to be uncomfortable. "Yeah," she mumbled.

"How so?"

"Well, I told you, I ain't no slut. I'm only nineteen. How young do you think I got started, twelve?"

He seemed a bit chagrined to be reminded of how young she was, and that she grew up in an environment a lot more sheltered than the one in L.A. "I guess not. How many boyfriends you had?"

"In general, or that I slept with?"

"Either or. Both."

"I've dated a bunch of guys. None of them all that seriously and only, um," she started to try and decide what the magic number of guys she'd had sex with should be. She wasn't sure she wanted him to know the truth. Sometimes it was already hard not to feel like the country bumpkin to their sophisticated Los Angeles attitudes. She didn't want to say anything to paint herself in an even more back country light. But it was a touchy area. Too few and she looked like an innocent child. Too many and she looked like the easy sort he was used to. It was a very complicated lie to formulate. In the end he took the chance away from her.

"It's hard not to know you're about to lie to me when it takes you this long to decide on an answer. Especially since you've already admitted there ain't that many to add up."

"Ok, shit. It's like the fuckin' Spanish inquisition. I only ever slept with two of them."

"Two?" he asked, his voice sounding shocked.

She looked at him askance. Was him implying two was a lot? He, who took a different girl home after every time his best friend raced a car and won.

"That's it?" he questioned.

So he was shocked the number was small, not shocked that the number seemed large. She decided part of punishing him could be rubbing it in. "Yeah. Really I was only dating one of 'em. The other one was just a guy I knew, ran into when we were both drunk, and allowed myself to be taken home by from the bar one night." She glanced at Vince. He looked very uncomfortable. "So while we're on this subject, what about you?"

"What about me, what?"

"Well, how many girls have you dated and or slept with?"

"Well," he paused.

She looked over at him. He looked very embarrassed for some reason.

How on earth was he supposed to admit he could tell her how many girls he'd dated, because the number was so small, but that he had no idea how many he'd just slept with?

As she watched him flounder for an answer to give her, and slowly get more and more uncomfortable and upset looking, she took pity on him. Well, not right away. She let him sweat it out a bit first. It served him right, really. "Just tell me how many you've actually dated V. I know you've been a bit too indiscriminate to count up all the others."

"How do you know that?"

His shocked expression went a long way to soothing some of her remaining need to hurt him back. "Jesse has a big mouth."

Vince frowned tightly. "I see. Well, girls I've actually dated huh?"

"Yeah." She refused to let him off the hook, despite getting the feeling that was exactly what he was fishing for.

"Am I allowed to count you?"

"I guess so." She'd let him count the day he took her out to lunch and the fair, just to be nice, she figured.

"Two."

"Two? Two including me?" she asked incredulously.

"Yeah. There was Donna Moore in high school and then there was you."

"So how soon after the back of Donna Moore did you decide you were in love with Mia?"

He really looked at her in shock when that left her mouth. "Excuse me?" he questioned. He answered his own question in a growl. "Jesse, I shoulda known."

"Nope, not Jesse. You gave yourself away there. The way you talk to her, look at her. And the way she's clearly good at, and use to, ignoring your advances 'cause she doesn't feel the same way."

"If you figured that out already, why are you still talking to me?"

She shrugged. "Why not? You ain't with Mia. You just wish you were. Wishin' doesn't always mean something's gonna happen. If it did, Jesse wouldn't live here anymore. He'd live with me where he belongs, up where he was born. And if wishing was all it took, I'd live down here with him. He says I'm the only thing missing from his life down here to make it totally perfect. I mean, I wasn't looking at the whole thing all that differently than you were. We'd have some fun while I was here and when I left, it'd be on good terms, that we could stay friends. I just thought you'd have the good sense to wait until I was gone to start up your old habits again." She didn't give him a chance to say anything, rushing headlong into the rest of her explanation. "But I mean, did it ever occur to you that it's not the best way to go about impressing Mia? To sleep with anything female that'll have you, right there in front of her, in the same house as she lives in?"

"Well yeah, it occurred to me. But what'm I supposed to do? She won't gimme the time of day most of the time. I'm just supposed to forget that other girls exist and hope she realizes I _do_ one day?"

"You really wanna know what I think about what you should do about the whole situation?"

"Yeah, I asked didn't I?" He didn't really want to know at all, because some instinct told him he really wasn't going to like the answer. But he couldn't put his curiosity out of his mind about what she'd say either. What exactly did she think she knew about it?

"Just remember you asked me to tell you this." Knowing Vince's volatile nature and inability to deal with information he didn't want to hear, a little voice in her head told her it was foolhardy to tell him her real opinion. She quashed the little voice. She wanted to tell him and she had every intention of doing so. After everything he had done and said yesterday night, he could put up or shut up, and that was the only way she had it in her to feel on the subject. "I think you should forget her and make a point to move on. Just knowing women in general—since you know, I am one—and knowing Mia, she's never gonna change her mind about you, Vince. She don't like you that way and she never, ever, will."

"Never ever is a long time," he ground out through clenched teeth. He'd known he wasn't going to like her answer.

"Yep, and if you keep on waiting for Mia to fall for you, it's gonna be a very lonely, long time for you. 'Sides, you'n Mia wouldn't even be good together."

"How do you think you know that?" That portion of her opinion was something he really did think she should have kept to herself. He didn't ask her to speculate on whether he and Mia would make a good couple. He asked her for her opinion on what he should do about his feelings for Mia. And he hadn't even really wanted to do that.

"'Cause I know you better than you think I do, and I know her a bit too. She'd bore you after awhile and you'd slowly crush her under your thumb. She's not the kind of girl to stand up to your shit day after day. There's just not enough steel in her backbone to allow her to deal with you and there's not enough challenge in Mia Toretto to keep you interested in her for the long haul. You have nothing in common with her, not even in the most base of ways. You think she wants it rough, all teeth and nails, push and pull? You want me to believe that you'd give up fast, hard and wild sex just to be with Mia?"

"Why would I have to?" His anger got the better of him and he kept pushing on, even when he knew that the best course of action was to let the topic drop, and now, before he really lost his cool.

"Because Mia wants candles and rose petals. Mia wants tender and slow, and I doubt very much she leans toward bruises and biting. And if you ever fucked around on her and Dominic found out, he'd kill you."

He wouldn't deny she was right about Mia, and the kind of girl she was. But if he had Mia, he'd be different. He'd be able to give Mia whatever she wanted, what she needed to be happy. At least, he'd told himself so a million times. And he wasn't a cheater. That was why he was single. He knew he wasn't going to make a commitment to any girl but Mia, so he just didn't. "Maybe with her, it wouldn't matter."

"Maybe." She shrugged. "Or maybe not. I still think you only think you want her now because she's the ever elusive challenge that you haven't conquered yet. I think once you caught her, you'd toy with her awhile before you got bored. And just like a jungle cat who caught a mouse, once you toyed all the fight out of her, you'd get tired of her. And you _would_ slowly wear her down, Vince. You'd wear the fight and life right out of her, just trying to keep up with you and deal with your moods and attitudes, put up with the fire and ice. That's not the kind of man that Mia Toretto is looking for and not the kind that could ever make _her_ happy in the long run.

"She wants a man who'll bring flowers and little gifts home without being asked, remembers birthdays and anniversaries, makes a big deal outta that stuff. Wants to be pampered and spoiled. She wants romance, and simple compliments just aren't ever going to cut it. She wants to know what she's dealing with on a daily basis. She wants a steady, caring, but ultimately boring kind of guy. She doesn't want to have to wonder what day will be the day that her man is fun and playful and what days will be the days they'll fight, cuss and roar the house down. I just don't think you have it in you to treat her like she wants to be treated—needs to be treated—long term. Maybe at first, maybe while finally having her was novel for you. But not for months and years into the future. Not unless you'd change who _you _are just to be with _her_. You'd either cut her loose and watch her run off, or she'd be too tired to run, and you'd just end up snapping her in two—breaking her."

He couldn't help the snarl that echoed around the car's interior when she took his most cherished dream and shot it full of holes with a few carefully chosen words. "I don't see it that way," he finally got his temper under control enough to bite out through his clenched teeth.

"Sorry I offended you."

He forced himself to shrug, despite the fact he was seriously pissed, and she really didn't sound sorry at all. In fact, she sounded almost gleeful to impart what she had. Her apology had been offered in a flip tone that showed she wasn't truly sorry at all, and he knew it. But he couldn't say much to her, not after how he'd treated her and after promising to make his conduct up to her. He was quickly learning that—like himself—if you burned her, she burned back. "I asked."

"You did. But the truth hurts and I know what I told you stung. I didn't try to tone it back, maybe because I thought you needed to hear it, and maybe because somewhere inside I'm still just a bit pissed at you for yesterday night. And because I didn't soften up what I said, now you're mad at me. But you'll get over it. You'll just convince yourself I don't have a clue what I'm talkin' about."

"I'm pretty sure that in most things you bother to offer an opinion on, you know exactly what you're talkin' about."

"Yeah, but you still didn't really want to hear it."

"No I didn't. But now I have. I'll cope."

She parked the car at DT. "Sure hope so. I just hope that coping doesn't turn into waiting the rest of your life for something you'll never have that would never live up to what you've built it up to be in the first place."

"How does someone who's ever only dated one guy long term become such an authority on relationships, huh?"

She could hear the barely checked anger in his tone. He didn't appreciate her breaking it down for him. She didn't care. She did think he had to hear it, and might start to believe it if he got it from someone who hadn't been saying it to him for years. She also acknowledged the part of herself that simply wanted to slash him with her words and watch him bleed, like he'd cut her the night before at races. He brought that side of her to the surface, brought that intentionally cruel facet of her personality out to the forefront. That instinctual, animalistic side, the woman who indulged in her desires to hunt and prey, stalk and maim, claw and bite. He brought the wild out of her routine existence. It didn't always seem to be a good thing, but it was sure exciting compared to how she normally lived. She finally decided to answer his question. "I'm a scary judge of character, V."

She looked across the interior of the Maxima at him, serious as a heart attack as she delivered her assurance. "I don't know how you can claim that when you let yourself get involved with me."

"There's nothin' really wrong with your character V. Well, nothin' a little housebreakin' wouldn't fix," she amended, smirking.

"That so?" her statement forced a ghost of a smile out of him with his answer. She was just so full of herself, and she played by the same sort of 'me first' rules he did. She was hard to take, but then again, so was he.

"Yeah, that's so. Every once'n a while I see this glimmer of something more in you Vincent. This little shadow of something good, something more'n you really want me'n the rest of the world to see. Don't let me catch it too often or you'll ruin that tough, arrogant asshole front you've got goin' on."

She got out of the car and bounded toward the shop before he could have anything to say about her revelation, a barrel of energy when she should be at home in a dark room wishing she were dead. He got out of the car more slowly, lost in his own thoughts. She'd given him a lot of things to think on. Things he didn't really want to think on. But once she'd put ideas into his head his mind wouldn't let them be. He kept picking at it, over and over again.

He had always known that Mia, the girlie girl, would look for romance, poetry and flowers. He had always just convinced himself that because she was the woman for him, he'd be that way with her. That just because he had no innate desire to treat any girl that way didn't mean he couldn't, just that he had never found a girl he wanted to treat like that before. Surely if he had Mia, he would want to do those things for her because he would want her to be happy. Wouldn't he?

It was another interesting point that Tempest had raised about the whole rough and wild nights that he did seem to enjoy, considering what it had done for him and to him when she'd practically taken a chunk out of his neck. Mia would never do anything like that. It would never enter her ladylike head to take her desire and passion out on a guy with her teeth and nails. It wasn't in her personality to even think like that. She wasn't a jungle predator, she was a pretty butterfly. Where Tempest was as elemental as her name, Mia was as gentle and sweet as her much sainted and long dead mother. Where one was often a force of nature, intent only on her own path and getting what _she_ needed even if it meant destroying some of the things in her path along the way, the other was nature itself, with all the caring, mothering instincts it was possible to find in one human. As different as the two were, why was it he was finding it harder and harder to see which one he'd ultimately rather have?

If he could just remember why it was he started liking Mia in the first place, he'd be a lot more settled. He knew that someplace back in time he'd had a good reason for it. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. He wanted to know if the Skyline was back from where he'd sent it last night, and get his unsettling questions out of his head. The sooner he put a smile on Tempest's face, the sooner he could get back to being content with his life instead of mad at himself for being a jerk and confused by the choices he was making. He caught up with her just inside the shop door.


	15. Of Testosterone and Simple Things

**AN: I'm sorry in advance for any wonkie formatting issues with this update. For some reason, will not allow me to upload anything but straight .txt files. And that messes up all my formatting. So I've tried fixing it in the edit stage as best as I can, but I'm not sure how well I'm managing. So, here it is, hopefully readable. Let me know what you think! I love to hear from you, no matter what you have to say. Oh, and I did do a little work on the last chapter of Catalyst the other day too, so no promises, but I did start it and that's something at least. ;) Much love, T**

**The Funeral of a Good Girl **  
By – _TempestRaces _  
Chapter 15 – **Of Testosterone and Simple Things **

"What the hell did Leon put in that blender?" Vince asked, curious what had given her so much energy after the crappy night's sleep she'd had. Considering there was only three years between their ages, sometimes how very youthful she seemed next to him scared him. Sometimes, she was just plain buoyant. So happy it almost bothered him. And some days she was far less so, almost subdued. And sometimes she switched out of thin air between the two. Always to extremes though. There was no middle ground, no happy medium. When she was happy, she was _happy_. When she was down, she was _down_. And when she was mad, she was god damn _furious_.

"Is that really my Skyline?" she asked, rather than answer his question. Her voice was low pitched and it definitely sounded like she was in shock.

He looked up and saw that her car was in fact sitting back in the shop again. He was glad the boys he'd sent it to had worked as fast as they had told him they could. The car was on a slight angle and both the doors were open, allowing them to see right into the interior. From what he could see, the job done had surpassed all his expectations. Someone—likely Jesse—had also washed and waxed it so it sat gleaming like it was still wet under the florescent lights of the garage. "It looks like yours. I doubt Leon'll ever paint his with lightening, so it must be yours."

"But it has racing seats now. We didn't get anything for the interior yesterday. Other than the gauges," she amended.

"We didn't get anything _here_ for the interior other than the gauges. Then I called in a few favours and got the boys down at StitchCraft to fix you up with a show worthy interior to match all that engine shit you guys did yesterday."

"Is that suede? Do I have suede seats in my car?"

He grinned. Yep, she was in shock. He had done the impossible. He'd rendered Tempest almost speechless. He went out on a limb and wrapped an arm around her middle. His day started to get upgraded from shitty to ok when she didn't fight him off or look upset to have his hands on her. "Well, suede and leather. The matte black stuff is suede. The inserts are leather, the dash is leather."

"Excuse me," she shook her head before looking up at him over her shoulder. "Did you say StitchCraft? _You_ had my interior done at _StitchCraft_?"

"Yeah. You gonna go look at it up close, or admire it from way back here all day?"

"I'm scared to touch it."

He took a step forward, which forced her to take one as well. He didn't let her stop, but kept walking her forward until they were right beside the open driver's side door. "It's still just a car Trouble. A really nice car, but still just your car, same as it was yesterday."

She was in shock. She had no other explanation for what the perfectly fitted, suede and leather, brand new, StitchCraft designed interior of her car made her feel. She took in the carefully embroidered GT-R emblems on the headrests, as well as the Recaro logos embroidered on the seatbacks.

The seats were black suede with leather inserts. The inserted leather seating surfaces were printed to look just like the outside of the car, awash in lightning that almost seemed to glow. The dash and carpets were black. The dash, black leather and the carpet, inky black cut pile that looked plush enough to crawl onto and sleep in comfort. There were carpeted floor mats in each footwell, front and rear. They had 'Skyline GT-R' embroidered on them. All the embroidery was done in a shimmery mauve colour which matched one of the colours around the lightning perfectly. Her new gauges were now all cleverly worked into the interior and seemed like they'd been placed there by Nissan, not by someone after the fact. There were leather inserts on the doors to match those in the seats, and on each door the StitchCraft logo was embroidered.

"You did this?" she asked Vince as she continued to gape.

"Well, after all the work you guys put into making the go match the show, it was only right that you had actual race seats and a nice stereo."

"Nice stereo?" Now she had a nice stereo too? No more Crappy Tire purchased Sony Explode head unit? She wondered if passing out was an option.

"Why don't you just get in the damn thing and start it up so you can have a real look around, huh?"

"I just don't know what to do with myself. I thought I'd be building it piece by piece with knockoffs for the rest of my life. Now here it is, all ready to go and done in twenty four hours." This was what he'd been up to when he'd asked her to leave her car behind and ride with him? Ok, perhaps to a _normal_ female this wasn't that big a deal. But to _her_, getting her a new interior for her car done at the premier auto upholstery shop across two huge countries was downright romantic. Where _the fuck_ had the Vince who'd planned this been when the other one had been ignoring her for sluts directly afterward? How could the man who'd come up with a surprise like this treated the woman he'd done it for so badly on the exact same night? _I'll never, ever be able to understand them_, she thought, shaking her head with a rueful smile. _Men_!

"You haven't even seen what I consider the best part yet," Vince said.

She looked up at him in shock. "I don't know how much more I can take, so you better go easy on me here."

He smirked before pulling a remote unit out of his pocket and clicking first one button, then a second. A white neon kit came on under the car, lighting up steady for a moment before it started to flash. Before it flashed a second time, from someplace inside the car the sound of thunder rumbled ominously. The 'lightning' under the car flashed on cue after the rumble. He dragged her around to the nose of the car. She looked where he pointed.

Inside a white neon plate frame was a California vanity plate which read 'TROUBLE' and above it a decal said 'Here comes'. She threw her head back and started to laugh. She couldn't help it. Here comes Trouble. It was perfect. "As soon as I get home, I'm getting an Island plate to match for the rear."

"You already got the neon frame for it. We put one back there too." Vince dragged her back to the open door. "Did you see how the white neon lights in the foot wells flash in time with the neon kit under the car?" 

"No, make it do it again," she ordered. When the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed, both inside the car and out, she clapped her hands in joy. "I love it."

He loved the look on her face when she laughed with all she was. It was easy to see where the analogy 'glow with happiness' had come from. "I'm glad. I was scared you'd be pissed at me for doing it without your input."

"You thought I'd be mad about someone pulling strings to get me a StitchCraft interior and Recaro racing seats? A leather StitchCraft interior?"

"I sorta took the decision out of your hands what your interior was gonna look like."

"I couldn't have designed it better myself. In fact, I doubt I could have done it as well. It's starting to freak me out how well you picked up on exactly what I'd like. I didn't know they could put something like lightning on leather."

"I didn't either. I just told them about you and how it was painted and this is what they came up with." Her easy acceptance of what he'd done shocked him, but pleased him. He had a funny feeling she didn't surrender her right to make up her own mind about anything in her life very often. Her thinking he knew her well scared him deep inside, but he pushed it down.

"How? And when?"

"I know the owner, you don't wanna know how. And last night. That's why the guys let you off the hook about not wanting to take it to races so easily. They knew I was gonna try and put you up to leaving it for the night because they knew it was supposed to be down at the StitchCraft shop by ten thirty."

"You had them work all night at it?"

"Yeah, it was the only time. I knew you'd be down here looking to get it back today so it wasn't like they had days to work at it if it was gonna be a surprise."

"I just don't know what to say."

"I'd settle for a smile."

"There's that shimmer of something better again V. Better say something arrogant or nasty to hide it."

"Not today, Trouble. We'll work on my image tomorrow."

Unable to help herself, and overcome with how it made her feel to see her car completed, and to know that the interior was only done because of Vince, she impulsively hugged him. He hugged her back, resting his chin on the top of her head for a moment before letting her go. He wanted to hold her longer, lean down and taste her mouth too, but he didn't want to push his luck. So he turned her loose and let things stand at friendly.

Leon and Jesse came wandering up, the rest of the team not far away. "So cuz, what'd ya think?"

"I'm still not sure I'm not high from whatever Leon slipped me in the green slop he made me drink when I woke up." 

"I hear you had a bit of a fright last night, after you promised me you'd respect your limits."

"I have limits?" she asked, head cocked to the side in mock question.

"Yeah, and if you ever step over them and scare me like you did last night, I'll never let you out of my sight without a chaperone again." Vince growled.

"I guess I let you down twice T. I left you to run from the cops on your own at races and I didn't even think to keep an eye on you last night afterward."

"Jess, what I do with my body and life isn't ever going to be your fault. I drank way too much and no one made me do it. It was all my own stupidity. Damn J, you're only two months older than me, remember? Who died and said you had to be the mature one all of a sudden?"

"Dunno."

"Can we just say yesterday was pretty crappy for all involved and let it drop? I don't want to spend the foreseeable future rehashing what happened yesterday."

"Sounds like a good idea." Leon finally spoke. "So, when are you gonna take me for a drive in this car? I seem to remember a conversation about three inch pipes and a blow off valve."

"Open the bay door baby! Let's take a run." She slid onto the new driver's seat and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath in through her nose to just enjoy the smell of new leather. The new leather wrapped MOMO steering wheel felt like heaven in her hands. She pushed the clutch in after fixing the seat to suit her. Without ever opening her eyes she slipped the car into neutral, pressed the brake and flicked the key. The car came to life with a roar which evened out into a powerful grumble once it was idling. She was sure she had a stupidly happy look on her face but she couldn't help it. "I don't even know what to say." She finally opened her eyes and looked up at Jesse, Leon and Vince, who were all standing around the door. "Thank you doesn't seem like enough. This car was the only dream I ever had that came true. I thought the day they unloaded it off the transport truck out front of my house was the happiest day I'd ever have. This is better. It's the car I knew it could be, but didn't think I'd ever be able to make it."

"Don't get all mushy on us Cuz. It's just a car. Next thing you know we're gonna be in a group hug, talking about our childhoods."

"It's just a car that'll take that damn Jetta and whip its ass all around the block and back." She grinned.

"Take it out for a spin, for god's sake. We're never gonna know how it really sounds just sittin' there." Vince was ready to do something that would take the focus off their feelings, and any discussion about them.

"Get in," she gestured to the interior with a backwards nod of her head. "We'll take it up into boost."

With a glance at each other, Leon and Vince slid into the back and let Jesse take the front. Tempest let the car coast out of the shop and into the street. Once she was clear of the parking lot she revved it up in first and dumped the clutch. They took off with an ear shattering squeal. The roar from the huge, high flow exhaust was loud, but not annoyingly so. It sounded purposeful, not broken. When she shifted from first to second there was an audible 'whoosh' from the blow off valve.

"See, that's what I'm talkin' 'bout!" Leon said, laughing. "Sounds tight."

"Sounds like fast, is what it sounds like," Tempest answered. "Holy shit!" She laughed, a breathless, happy sound. She couldn't believe she was driving her Skyline. It wasn't like the same car. She felt like she could race the world and come out on top in the car, the way it was now. "The difference in the car is unreal. It pulls like no tomorrow now. It was always scary fast, but now its big leagues fast." She glanced in the rear view. "You wanna race me Leon?"

"Um, I'm not sure about that," he hedged.

Her bottom lip stuck out in a pout. "You scared?"

"Naw, I just don't wanna hurt your feelings when I kick your ass."

"I don't think you could."

Vince and Jesse ooohed. "Sounds like a gauntlet was thrown there, Leon," Jesse said, laughing.

"We'll see. Won't be today."

"I can't believe that we don't go racing again 'til Saturday. I can't wait to roll up in this car."

Her words only served to remind Vince that he'd blown his only chance to have her at races with him. She might hang out around him from now on, but she'd always be her own person with her own ride and own agenda from now on. She'd never just be there to be there. Now she'd be there to take her car down and show it off. "We should swing by to show Harry," Vince reminded, wanting to take his mind off the subject.

They fed her the directions she needed to find 'The Racer's Edge' and they did go show Harry. He was suitably impressed and they hung out with him for a while, talking about her plans for the car long term and how it drove. By the time they left Tempest was the proud owner of two 'The Racer's Edge' babydoll tee shirts and the guys were convinced Harry was in love with her.

"He ain't in love with me."

"He gave you free stuff."

"He gave me a tee shirt. He has a vested interest in me wearing it around while I'm driving a car that little ricer boys everywhere will have wet dreams about."

"Harry doesn't give anything away for free. Plus, he practically drooled on you."

" Leon, be serious. Besides, he's gotta be like what? Forty? He ain't scammin' on me."

"Why isn't he scammin' on you just 'cause he's forty?"

"'Cause he didn't seem like no pervert to me. If he was a forty year old guy who seriously wanted to pick up a nineteen year old chick, he'd be a huge ass perv."

"No he wouldn't," Vince broke in. "He'd just be normal for a guy. You never seen an eighty year old guy with a twenty something wife? It's just the male instinct. The strong, mature, older man wants to get with the younger women so he knows he'll be able to carry on his genetics."

"You're telling me that Harry wanted to get with me because I've got so many of my reproductive years left?" Tempest asked, looking at Vince in her rearview with an eyebrow cocked in disbelief.

"I'm just tellin' you that's how men think. I'm not tellin' you that's what Harry was thinkin' this time. Just that the logic of the whole younger woman, older man thing does seem to make sense. To guys anyway."

She rolled her eyes. "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard. Testosterone has a lot to answer for."

Jesse laughed. "Yeah, it sure does."

"You're not supposed to agree, loser. You're a guy and a product of it."

"To you, I'm not a guy. I'm your family. It's different."

"Yeah, you're right. It is. I don't see you as a guy. I see you as the little kid I use to be bathed with, and share a bed with when our moms would take turns babysitting us."

The guys laughed when Jesse turned bright red. "Shut up! I know where you two live!"

"Yeah, we're real scared Jesse."

Jesse gave up. He knew he wasn't going to win. Being the baby had its advantages, but it had its disadvantages too. After they went out and got some lunch they headed back to the garage.

Much as she knew she shouldn't spend her whole vacation in another garage, Tempest found herself sucked into helping out at Dom's. The shop had gotten busy while the four of them were out joyriding, and as such she felt somewhat responsible for the build-up of work waiting. She'd taken all Dom and Letty's help with her, leaving them alone to handle the backlog of work that landed en masse, which was often the way things happened in a shop, as she well knew.

It did piss her off that Dom kept giving her weak jobs to do. She decided, in the middle of her third oil change, that she was out of there the second she was done. Helping was one thing. Being slave labour on her vacation was another. She'd done her time at the bottom, doing oil changes. She was beyond it now, and had earned her way there. Perhaps not working for Dominic, but she was still seriously better than he was giving her credit for. She finished what she was in the middle of and pulled the car out of the garage. On her way back in she heard Dom swear while talking to Letty.

"I just don't fuckin' get why the damn thing keeps on doin' this!" Dom told Letty, raising his voice in frustration and making like he was going to throw the flare nut wrench in his hand across the room.

"I don't know and I didn't make it that way, so don't yell at me," Letty snapped back.

Tempest looked over and found them standing beside the open door of a late nineties Sunfire sitting on four axle stands with no wheels on it. She decided to go find out what the problem was. She wandered over, trying to seem nonchalant. "So, what does it keep doin'?"

"Nothin'. Don't worry 'bout it. I'll figure it out."

"But will you figure it out before you go crazy and throw all your tools around the shop?" Tempest asked, her voice dripping with a desire to rub Dom's nose in his issues.

"You think you could figure it out faster, Trouble?"

Dom put a sarcastic lilt on the nickname Vince didn't, and it was one she didn't appreciate. She knew somehow that fixing the car when he couldn't would satisfy her more than any verbal sparring match with him could. She was conscious of the looks she was getting from Leon, Jesse and Vince as well. "I'm pretty much positive I can."

"I didn't even tell you what's wrong with it yet!" Dom's incredulous shock at her assurance was delivered with a tinge of anger at her cocky attitude.

She shrugged. "Don't matter. You tell me what it is you can't figure out about it and I'll fix it. I'll have it fixed inside flat rate time too."

Dom raised his eyebrows. "You'll have it done in flat rate time?"

She nodded to the affirmative. "Unhuh."

"Ok, hot shot." _Who__does she think she is?_ "I had to put new callipers and wheel cylinders on it, and now I can't get the system to bleed."

"That's all?" Tempest asked, smirking. That was what Mr. Big-Bad-Bald-Beautiful—if you were into muscle bound slabs of testosterone—couldn't fix? It was going to be so easy to show him up; it would make taking candy from a baby look challenging.

"Get it done. What's book time to bleed the brakes on this thing?"

"I think it pays point five, but I won't need half an hour for this." She took the wrench out of his hand with a flourish and made a show of making sure it was a correctly sized 10mm—as if he couldn't get that right, either—before motioning Letty toward the driver's seat. She put an exhaust hose on the car, went to the rear right wheel and called out to Letty. "Ok, start it up and pump it up."

Letty did as asked, wondering if Tempest would really succeed where Dom had failed. The only thing she had done differently so far was having her turn the ignition on. Surely that couldn't make that much of a difference, could it?

"That's what I did! How do you figure that it's gonna work now just because you're the one doing it?" Dom didn't miss out on what Letty had also picked up.

"Just chill out for five minutes baldie, and let me work."

Dom growled. Leon laughed behind his hand, not sure pushing Dom so hard was a great idea, but unable to ignore the humour. Vince got ready to get in another fist fight with his best friend. He figured when Dominic went for her throat—which he was quite likely to do—he'd have to get in the middle of them and save her ass.

She moved from the rear right to the rear left wheel, telling Letty when to hold the pressure on the brake pedal and when to pump it up again. After the rear left she moved on to the front right and finally the front left. She stood up and went over to stand beside Letty. "How's the pedal feel."

"Good," Letty answered, one eyebrow raised. Why had it worked for Tempest and not for Dom? "How'd you manage?"

"Because on a lot of GM's, newer J bodies especially, you can't bleed the brake system unless the car's running. Since there wasn't a hose on it, I figured you guys didn't know that, and hadn't tried bleeding it while the engine was on. Has something to do with how the ABS control is actuated by the ECU."

"How'd you know that?" Dom asked. It was clear her victory didn't please him.

"Because I'm a factory trained tech for this car. Its part of our training to know how to do _simple_ things like bleed the brakes."

Dom walked away, shaking his head and mumbling to himself. Much as she was sure the things Dominic was muttering were far from flattering and likely did involve her bruised and broken in a ditch somewhere, Tempest couldn't wipe the grin off her face to save her soul. For the rest of the day it was like Dom decided to punish her with the hardest of the hard jobs.

Dom did pick through and give her the most challenging work. Much to his chagrin she did ok. And when she didn't know or couldn't figure something out, she wasn't too proud or ashamed to ask Jesse or Leon for help. That pissed him off almost more than her besting him with the Sunfire did. She was supposed to be too proud to ask for help. She was supposed to suffer her inability to find the problem in silence, get frustrated with her lack of skill, and in a perfect world break down in tears somewhere after admitting she wasn't as good as she'd let on. She wasn't supposed to stay stress free and ask for help when she needed to. He was brought out of his thoughts as she called out to her cousin.

"Jess?"

"Yo?"

"You got a big power handle?"

"For what?" Jesse asked as he walked her way, wiping his hands on a rag that had seen better days.

"To get this exhaust flange unbolted."

"That should just come right off."

"How do you figure?"

"Cause this ain't Canada, and things don't seize down here like they do up there."

"Ok, but if it snaps off it's gonna be your fault."

"Just try your half inch drive ratchet. It'll be enough torque to get that off, trust me."

"Ok." She went back to the car she was working on, replacing a cracked exhaust manifold, and tried to get the down pipe unbolted from the manifold with a normal ratchet, against her instincts. "Well fuck me! You were right Jess."

"I told you!" Jesse called back. "Just another reason why you should be working down here. It's so nice to work in a place where things don't rust."

"Fuck you!" Tempest called back with laughter tingeing her voice. Maybe it was nice, that didn't mean he had to rub it in that things sure did rust where she was from.

"Against too many laws _and_ my morals baby girl!"

"Get your damn mind outta the gutter J!"

"It likes it down here," he called back.

Tempest just laughed at his verbal antics, going back to what she had been doing. By the end of the day they had all the work done.


	16. Of Sharks and Beating Leon

**AN: We had that list of 'islanderisms' posted on the wall at work for the longest time. Given that I used to work at 'crappy tire' I feel totally justified calling it that. And since we have a Tim Horton's right across the street from us at my new job, yeah, that drive thru is busier than the bank on pay day, LOL. Out of a mild curiousity, is there anything in particular that causes so many people to read this story and not review? I always get sorta paranoid that people read without reviewing if they have nothing nice to say. For God's sake, if that's the case, don't say anything nice! Just tell it like it is. It's how I live and I wouldn't dream of asking anyone else to start paying lip service either. Just give me reasons why you don't like it and we're all good. So I guess if you don't like it _just because_, I don't need to know. But if there's something that drives you crazy, let me know. So here we go with another update. Enjoy!  
**

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Sixteen – **Of Sharks and Beating Leon**

Dom grudgingly admitted to himself that they wouldn't have caught up if it wasn't for the fact that Tempest had both stuck around and decided to pitch in. Not only was she capable and able to help, because she'd stuck around, so had Jesse. So that meant they were up two bodies, not just Tempest, but Vince was extra too. Not that he ever planned on telling her he was grateful for the help. He was still smarting too much from her fixing the brakes of the Sunfire when he hadn't known how. Even though it wasn't something he was doing wrong, or something he really should have known, it still bothered him that she had known how when he hadn't. Even if she only knew because it was a quirk of that particular car and she just happened to be a factory trained technician for that car, it still made him incredibly irate that she had known something he hadn't, and that she had been able to use that knowledge to show him up.

They all went home in their own rides, as always.

On the way home, Tempest had to admit to herself she was feeling pretty good. She'd put in a good days work, shown the boys she was capable, shown up Dominic, who drove her crazy with his need to keep on not liking her over something she couldn't control, and last but hardly least, gotten her Skyline back with a fully tuned engine and show worthy interior. She cranked up her stereo and let the bass pound through her. Her Altima and RX-7 had nice systems, but there hadn't been time or money to add one to the Skyline. She'd missed it. So she turned it up, put the windows down, took the elastic out of her hair and let the wind toss it around while she drove too fast and belted out the words of every song that played.

And when she pulled up in front of the house, just behind Dominic, who was the only person who'd managed to stay out front of her, she was still belting out the lyrics.

"_I had enough. Made up my mind. I'm gonna get up, and out, and wild. I love myself today, not like yesterday. I'm cool. I'm calm. I'm gonna be ok. I love myself today, not like yesterday. Take another look at me now, 'cause it's your last look. Your last look forever_."

"You're not half bad. You play an instrument too?"

Vince's question, roared over the sound of her and Bif Naked belting out 'I Love Myself Today' shocked her and she jumped in the seat. She shut the car off and put the windows up before climbing out of her seat and shutting the door before locking it. "Nope. I don't sing either, just in the shower and along with the radio."

"So the three bands I've heard you play so far are Bif Naked, Eve 6 and Limp Bizkit. You only into rock?"

"No, not at all. I love hip hop, rap, rock, punk, country, pop. I'll listen to almost anything."

"But you never learned to play an instrument?"

"A little trumpet in high school band. Does that count?"

"Were you any good?"

She laughed. "God no. I was pretty bad at it. I never really learned to read music."

He nodded. They started up the lawn behind the rest of the team, who were piling out of their cars, talking about what to do with the evening. Mia arrived shortly after they did, and she started making supper.

For some reason, watching Mia cook food to feed seven people all alone seemed cruel. "Anything I can do to help you out?" Tempest offered.

"'Scuse me?" Mia asked in shock. "Did you just offer to help me with a household chore?"

"I guess I did," Tempest replied, looking rather confused.

Mia laughed. "I'm tryin' not to pass out from shock. I've never heard an offer of help before. I've had Dom fight for his right to operate the barbeque, as he's the man of the house. But I've never had anyone offer to just help me cook a meal on an idle Thursday before."

"Well, if there's something I can do."

"You would earn my eternal gratitude if you started chopping those peppers," Mia gestured toward where several green and red peppers sat beside a cutting board.

"Chopping them for what?" she asked so she would know how to cut the vegetables.

"Fajitas."

"So you want them in strips or rounds then?"

Mia shrugged. "Whatever. When food hits the table, as you've seen, it isn't going to be around long enough for anyone to care."

Tempest grinned. "Yeah, it's like when they show sharks on TV and someone starts to bleed in the water."

"Yes! Exactly!" Mia grinned back. "You're right. It's just like a feeding frenzy."

"We should really feed ourselves before we feed them. Than we'd get our pick of the food, and not have to fight anyone for it."

"Don't think it hasn't occurred to me before," Mia said, brandishing a butcher knife as she waved her arms to illustrate her point.

"Ok, just put the knife down," Tempest chuckled. "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye, at which time it becomes a sport."

Mia went back to chopping chicken with a giggle. "I just don't know how it is you seem to be able to both work in a garage and cook. Letty told me it wasn't possible for a woman to do both 'girl' things and work with men all day."

"It's harder for girls like me'n her, but since I live alone at home I either cook or I starve."

Tempest and Mia finished making dinner. As they predicted, when it hit the table the guys fell on it and within twenty minutes it was all gone, and the table was destroyed. The look Tempest sent Jesse's way insured that Mia had some help clearing the table. But that was when Mia found out that everyone else drew the line at washing dishes.

"I'd offer to help," Tempest told her as she carried the last of the dishes out of the dining room and into the kitchen. "But I draw the line at doin' dishes. I have a dishwasher at home and that's how I like it."

"Don't worry about it. I'm not used to having help in the first place."

Jesse bounded into the kitchen. "T?"

"Yeah J?"

"I wanna go to a movie. Come with me?"

"Sure. What're you gonna see?"

"House on Haunted Hill."

"The one about the people in the haunted mental institute?"

"Yeah," Jesse looked gleeful at the thoughts of the horror flick.

Tempest wasn't a huge fan of horror movies. But she figured she'd go anyway, because nothing she was going to pick to see was going to come close to as good as far as Jesse was concerned. "Ok, when's it start?"

"Nine. We'll have to be there by like eight to get good seats, so we'll have to leave now, or real soon."

"Where you goin?" Leon asked as he walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge, grabbing a beer out. He popped the top off and pulled half of it down in one swallow.

"To see 'House on Haunted Hill'," Jesse answered.

"Sweet, can I come?"

"Sure," Jesse answered. "You don't mind, do you cuz?"

"Heavens no. The more the merrier."

The three of them asked Mia if she wanted to come too, but she declined. They walked through the living room, past Dom, Letty and Vince, and started to put their shoes on.

"Where you guys headed?" Dom asked.

"Theatre."

"What are you goin' to see?" Letty asked.

Leon told her the movie they'd picked.

"Can we go too Dom? Please," Letty asked, pouting playfully.

"I guess so," Dom caved on a sigh. Like Mia, he wasn't big on horror movies.

"Guess we're all going then. I don't wanna stay home alone," Vince said as he stood up off the couch.

"Mia ain't comin'," Leon said, glancing at Mia where she stood in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. "She's too scared!"

"You're darn straight I'm not going to go pay money to have nightmares for the rest of the week," Mia agreed.

"I wanted to see that movie anyway," Vince said before he started for the door, shocking everyone by choosing to leave with them instead of staying home and being alone in the house with Mia.

"The house to myself for two hours?" Mia asked. "I don't know if I'll know what to do with myself. I can't remember the last time it happened. I think I'll need to make a list."

Tempest laughed. "I remember what that was like. When I lived at home I never had any time home alone. Moving out was the best damn thing I ever did."

"I thought you said your mom took care of your dog for you?" Vince questioned.

"She does. She owns the house across the street from the apartment building I moved into. She has a key."

"Why move out and stay so close?"

"I love my mom. I just needed my own space. This way when she needs me to do something for her, I 'm right there and it works the same way when I need her, but we each have our own space."

"Sounds like heaven. I wish I could rent the place next door to this place for myself." Mia sighed dreamily. "But this place would fall into ruins if I wasn't keeping it up. Enjoy your movie," she chirped, clearly rushing them out of the house so her alone time could start.

They filed out of the front door, Tempest bringing up the rear. She watched as Dom, Letty, Leon, and Jesse all walked to their own cars. "We're takin' six cars to go to a movie?"

They all answered back in variations of 'I ain't ridin' with him or her'. She shook her head. "I guess I'll take mine too then." Still shaking her head in disbelief that even Dom and Letty weren't riding together, she got into her Skyline and started the engine. As she went to put it in gear and follow Dom off down the street, the passenger side door opened.

"You mind if I ride with you?" Vince asked, still standing beside the car.

"No, get in," she answered. He slid in. "You sure you wanna buck the trend and be the only one who doesn't drive alone in his car to get to movie we're watching as a group?"

"Yeah. You might need someone who knows where they're going in the car with you."

"Jesse's car is as slow as molasses running uphill in January. I think I could follow him pretty much anywhere," she answered, chuckling at her slight on the Jetta.

"True, true." He didn't try to give her another reason, just fell into silence.

If he wasn't going to talk to her, just sit there, than she was cranking the tunes. If he didn't like it, he knew where the door was. The first song to come on after the end of 'I Love Myself Today' was 'I Love Rock and Roll' by Joan Jett. She realized she was singing along out loud when Vince started to chuckle.

"You sure you never had a desire to be a rocker girl? I can so see you with a guitar in your hands just rockin' out."

"I'm not co-ordinated enough to play guitar, let alone sing and play at the same time. There's too much to remember. All those strings, and your fingers needin' to hit different ones all the time."

"It's not as hard as you think."

"Says someone who already knows how to play."

"Well, I wasn't born that way. I had to learn."

"I suppose, if you could learn, pretty much anybody could." She smirked. "It can't take as much brain power as I really thought it did, when I really think about it. I mean, you seem to have mastered it."

"Well, I always thought drivin' took some skill. But yet there you are, behind the wheel. And you haven't had an accident that I've seen yet. So that's like five whole days I've known you, and you're still accident free. That's pretty good. For a girl."

"Oh baby, would I ever love a shot at runnin' you. I'd run you right off the god damn road. Me'n this car'd blow the doors off that thing you drive. All four of 'em," she said. It was clear she was implying the fact Vince's car had four doors made it slower than hers.

"I don't think so. The cars might be pretty even, but when it comes down to the skill of the driver, you ain't got nothin' on me."

"Yeah, I do. A clue how to race. 'Cause I do that, you know? Race? I don't just hang out and watch Dom win all the time while I," she caught herself about to end her sentence 'pick up his leftovers' and thought better of it. "Stand around and watch," she substituted quickly.

He knew from the unintended pause in her smart aleck quip that she'd ad libbed something off the top of her head. He really didn't think he wanted to know what it was she'd intended to say. He didn't want to end up in a fight with her again already. "I race too. Just 'cause I haven't since you've been here don't mean I don't race. I learned right along side Dominic when we were kids."

"Really?"

He had her attention now. She was really interested. As Third Eye Blind's 'Motorcycle Driveby' started to play, she turned the stereo down. He stopped to think, and as he was gathering his thoughts about learning to race with Dominic, the lyrics of the song penetrated into his thoughts. Third Eye Blind wasn't one of his favourite bands, but the melancholy nature of the lyrics and the music of the song reinforced the bittersweet feeling of telling anyone about how things had been before Giovanni 'Van' Toretto had been killed. Before everything had changed.

"Yeah. Dom's dad, Van, was a pro stock car racer. He was coming up fast in the pro circuit. He had a garage too, the garage Dom runs now. So after school and on weekends he paid Dom and I to help in the shop and he taught us about cars. He used to drag us to the track every weekend too, to help him with the car. He taught both of us to drive in his stock car. How to race. It's different than drags, I know, but Dom and I both got the same start."

"How was Mr. Toretto killed?"

"The summer Dom and I turned twenty a guy named Kenny Linder clipped Van's bumper coming into a corner and put his car into the wall at a buck twenty. Van burned to death in front of everyone. Me, Dom, Mia, Letty. There was nothin' any of us could do."

"I'm sorry. I know that's never the right thing to say, but I've never known anyone who died in my adult life, so I really don't know what that was like."

The fact she didn't try to emphasize with something she didn't understand sat well with him. That she admitted she didn't know what it was like or what to say was better than all the people who tried to bullshit. He shrugged. "It was rough. Worse for Dom than for any of the rest of us." Vince glanced over at Tempest. Her eyes were firmly on the road, but he could tell he had her full attention anyway. "Dom ran into the guy, Linder, about a week later. Dom was at the track, packing up his dad's car and tools and Linder walked by our garage at the track. Dom had a huge torque wrench, he was packing it, but when he saw Linder walk by he went after him. Just to yell at him I'm sure. But then I don't know what Linder said or did to set Dom off, but Dom started to hit him with this wrench. By the time he was done he'd pulled almost every muscle in his back and arms and Linder was beat over half to death. Linder can't race no more either. He can't drive. He has to take a bus to work. And they sent Dom to jail at Lompoc for two years. He just got out about six months ago. And back when he was convicted the California State Racing Authority banned him off the tracks for life."

"But all he wanted to be was a racer, just like his dad. I mean, all Jesse ever says about Dom is how fast he is behind the wheel and how great a racer he is. How he never wanted to be anything else."

"And now street racing is all he'll ever have. So I have raced. And I have won. I'm pretty good. But Dom's better. And since street racing is the only racing he'll ever have now, I guess I mostly take the back seat and let him have his glory."

"That's really sweet," Tempest answered. She didn't take her eyes off the road for a second, knowing after that admission he wouldn't want her looking at him. But she'd felt her heart melt just a bit when he'd made that admission. "You're a very loyal friend Vince. Dom's lucky he has a friend like you."

He shrugged off her praise. "After Van Toretto practically raised me'n Letty along with Dom and Mia, what else was I supposed to do? It was more like my brother was in jail than my friend. Letty and Mia had no one else. Someone had to do it."

"Yeah, but someone didn't have to be twenty year old you. Someone coulda been some relative of Dominic's."

"Then they woulda put Mia and Letty into foster care. California's a big place, and there ain't enough places for all the kids with no parents. Some of 'em fall through the cracks 'cause its easier. So as long as we didn't make a fuss about it, the social workers all looked the other way that Letty and Mia were only bein' looked after by an twenty year old punk who wasn't nothin' to them but a guy they'd known since they were kids."

Deciding it was time to lighten the mood, Tempest grinned. "Besides, if back then was anything like now, it was Mia who was takin' care of all'a you anyway."

He couldn't help the laugh that escaped him. "Yeah, I guess she was." He looked across the car and studied her profile. For all her cynicism and sass, she was one hell of a smart, caring woman. "You gonna just cruise this beast the whole way there? I mean, you got Letty, Leon, Dom and _Jesse_ out front'a you."

"That a challenge, V?"

"Sounded like one."

"Remember, you asked for it." She cracked her neck and downshifted out of fifth, started to pick up speed. She passed Jesse neatly. She made the Jetta look like it was standing still. Letty was next and put up a bit more fight. But with Vince egging her on, she had soon left Letty in her rear-view mirror too. When she pulled up beside Leon he made a kissie face at her. She flipped him off and floored her accelerator. The two Skylines were neck and neck for a stretch, neither able to edge out the other. Leon, seemingly tired of their endless tie, dropped a gear and started to edge out in front of her. Before she could do too much more than curse softly about it, Leon's surprise attack had worked and he was out front of her. He quickly changed lanes in front of her and blinked his brake lights at her.

"Son of a bitch!" she cursed at the little round taillights in front of her. Vince chuckled. His laughter rapidly ended when she switched lanes so fast his head cracked off the glass beside it.

"Shit Trouble! Was that necessary?"

"Fuck yes, it was." As she ground out her statement, she simultaneously dropped a gear herself. The Skyline growled in a credible impression of its owner and flew up the outside lane. Before Leon could do much more than look over in shock she had flown past him, middle finger raised in his direction. "How do you like them apples?" she called, laughing at what she imagined was the look on Leon's face.

She looked down at the speedo and saw she was going over a hundred and thirty miles an hour. Dom's RX-7 loomed just ahead of her. "Should I go for it?" she asked Vince, glancing his way.

"You can't take him. Just save yourself the embarrassment." Her trip past Leon had been quite nicely executed, but he didn't think she could possibly take Dominic. It didn't matter how good she was.

"Oh damn it boy! You should know you can't say stuff like that to me, son."

"I'm just tryin' to save you from an ass kickin'."

"Let's put your money where your mouth is."

He raised an eyebrow in shocked disbelief. "You wanna bet on whether or not _you_ can beat Dominic Toretto?"

"Sounds that way, Slick." She inched closer to Dom's bumper.

"Ok, you win—if you get out front of him even for a second—I'll buy your ticket and your snacks tonight."

"And if I don't win?"

"You let me take you out tomorrow night. My choice of venue."

"You're on," she agreed. She signalled her lane change and downshifted again, into third. She started to build up an impressive amount of speed. When she hit seven thousand RPM she shifted into fourth and floored it again. The car jumped ahead with a growl.

Vince was actually surprised how powerful and fast the Skyline was. He was starting to worry for his friend's pride. Tempest had managed to bring her front bumper level with Dom's rear. She slowly crept up until her nose was level with the front tire of Dom's seven.

Dom looked over and that was his first clue what was going on. When Tempest gave him a little two finger salute, flicking her fingers from the corner of her eye out in front of her in a jaunty little gesture and started to pull ahead of him, Vince had to laugh at the shocked look on Dom's face. Her nose edged out in front of Dom's.

"I did mean you have to get this whole car out front of him," Vince clarified.

"I know that. I'm workin' on it." She grinned back.

"You're closer than I thought you'd even get," he admitted. "But you ain't gonna get him."

"We'll see." Tempest thumbed her nitrous button in a light caress. Little did Vince know, she'd turned the system on, but on a delay back at the house. She could press nitrous one and start the system injecting a stage one, fifty horsepower shot. But it was dangerous on a public expressway. She decided to go for it anyway. The road looked clear for a while ahead, and seemed to lay straight too. She hit the button. The car surged ahead with a physical jump. As it was her first time on the spray in the Skyline, the sheer force of it had her laughing in joy. She was flying and it was like running wild. She could only realize she'd hardly analyzed the risk slash benefit ratio of using her nitrous at all. It had been down right spontaneous of her to use her spray when it was dangerous to do so.

Her car surged ahead even farther. Her use of the bottle had taken Dom by surprise. But she didn't get out front of him. Her rear bumper was still flying level with his front.

Dom could see her in her side mirror, as she was seated on the right hand side of her car. She had her head thrown back, laughing, and the look of joy on her face wasn't hard to see. It was clear she lived just for speed. The rush and the challenge was enough for her. It wasn't enough for him. He was driven to be the best. And that included now, in an impromptu race on the expressway. She wasn't beating him. After flipping up his seat and turning on the tanks, he hit the hidden button on his console which caused his A/C button to slide out. He hit his nitrous, his car squealed as the spray was injected into the twin turbo rotary spinning under the hood.

Like she'd sensed he would also use the nitrous after she had, she hit button two, upping her system to a hundred and fifty horsepower shot. Her car rushed ahead. She was so close to having Dom. She could taste her bragging rights she was so close. Just a few inches more and she would have her whole car in front of his.

Then he dropped a gear and pulled ahead so that their doors were even. Try as she might, she couldn't get out front of him. "I gotta give the boy props. He's seriously good," she admitted to Vince.

"Yeah he is. I really can't believe you did this good against him. You made Dom use his nitrous on the expressway. That's no little feat."

"I didn't win."

"You did real good. He's got three years experience you don't, and he grew up around cars. He grew up doin' this. Trust me when I tell you that you did good to keep up, let alone almost get out front."

"Thanks."

"For what?" Vince asked, curiosity written on his face.

"For not rubbing it in."

He looked over at her, shit eating grin on his face. He picked up one the shiny, inky curls resting on her shoulder and thumbed its silken texture. "Trouble, ain't you figured it out yet?"

"Figured what out?"

"There was no lose situation for me. Either I was takin' you out to the movies tonight or I'm takin' you out someplace better tomorrow. I stacked the deck."

She could only laugh at his deviousness. "I guess they don't call you Coyote for nothin' huh?" She figured she should be pissed. But she couldn't find that emotion anywhere. She almost wanted to damn him for telling her about Dom's father, and the role he'd played in the aftermath of Dom's incarceration. Now she felt for Dom. It wasn't as easy to hate him for hating her as it had been. And now that she'd seen just how loyal and caring Vince could be to those who'd earned the privilege, it was hard to remember how badly he'd hurt her too. Was that why he had a thing for Mia? Because he'd felt responsible for her, and watched her play the little woman to his man of the house for two years?

"Nope," he answered her, still grinning like a loon. "You might wanna slow down here. We're gonna exit up ahead. You can see the multiplex from here." He pointed. He was right.

With a sigh she pulled in behind Dom. "At least something good came out of all this."

"What's that?" Vince asked.

"I beat Leon."

He laughed. "I guess you did."


	17. Of Popcorn and Scary Movies

AN: Next chapter time. This chapter is actually likely NC-17. I just don't care. I'm tired, sunburned and Gin is playing a role in my Saturday night sitting home on the interweb, so I decided not to edit it. Oh well. Feel free to tattle on me if you must. If not, enjoy the chapter. Much love, Tempest.

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 17 – **Of Passengers and Scary Movies**

They pulled into the parking lot just behind Dom and parked beside him. Letty and Leon weren't far behind. Jesse arrived a minute later.

"Damn T! That thing's fast, huh?" Jesse asked, jumping out of his car and rushing over to the Skyline. "Did you actually have it on the bottle on the expressway?"

"Yeah," she laughed out. "Oh sweet Jesus the feeling of it Jess."

"That good huh?"

"The best."

"I can't wait to see you race it in a real race."

Tempest didn't answer him. She just forced her smile to remain firmly planted on her face. She didn't have the heart to disillusion her cousin, but she couldn't afford to race the car. She knew she'd never come up with the money to buy into a race. Two thousand American dollars was out of her grasp. "We gonna see this movie, or what?"

"Yeah, let's go before all the good seats are gone. It's gonna be enough of a challenge to find six together." Leon started for the building after delivering his statement.

Dom and Letty walked out front, Dom with his arm around her shoulders. Leon walked on Letty's other side. Jesse walked with his cousin, still pumping her for details about her run, and Vince walked on her other side, listening to her retell the race to Jesse a hundred times in a few variations.

By the time they got to the head of the line Dom and Letty were already in the line up for popcorn. Jesse went to get his ticket, and much to Vince's frustration, he told the clerk two people, buying his cousin's ticket for her. It was something Vince had planned to do, but now he wouldn't get the chance. Jesse and Tempest waited on him to finish before they all got into the line up for snacks.

"You gettin' anything?" Vince asked Tempest, from where he stood in front of her.

"Naw, I doubt it."

"No popcorn or soda at a movie?"

"I can only eat like one handful of popcorn before I feel stuffed solid so there's not much sense of me buying any. They only come in huge, gigantic, and who the fuck can eat all that size."

Vince made it to the head of the line. "One who the fuck can eat all that popcorn and one large Coke," he said, grinning. Jesse laughed out loud when he heard what Vince had ordered. The poor kid behind the counter looked at him like he was insane. "I meant large popcorn. One large popcorn and one large Coke." He turned back to Tempest. "You sure you don't want anything?"

"Oh, a bottle of water." She was sure he wasn't going to be happy until she gave in and got something. He didn't seem happy that was all she wanted, but he did let it go. He retrieved his bucket of cola and barrel of popcorn and handed her her water. They waited for Jesse to get his snacks. He went for the slightly smaller versions of what Vince had. They joined Dom, Letty and Leon in the line up for the theatre.

When they got in, Tempest ran ahead of them all. She had a thing where she had to be the one to pick the seats. It was just something that had always been that way. There was only one place she liked to sit. She ran half way up the stadium style seats and darted out, counting seats as she went. When she'd counted the exact middle seat she sat with a plop.

"What was that all about?" Leon asked, still climbing the stairs.

"I have to sit in the exact middle seat of the middle row," she answered with a shrug.

Jesse reached their row and sat beside her. Leon sat on Jesse's other side. Vince climbed over them all to sit on Tempest's other side. Dom and Letty pushed past them all to sit on Vince's other side, Letty beside Vince and Dom at the end.

Tempest leaned over to Jesse. "This is gonna be really scary, isn't it?"

"Oh yeah," Jesse answered, obviously in glee.

Tempest sat back up and kicked her feet up onto the back of the seat in front of her. She really didn't like scary movies. But she wasn't about to admit she was likely to be scared for days. Not in front of Dom, Leon and Vince. And not when Letty had seemed so stoked to see the gory flick. They all joked about the way she'd beaten them all but Dom on the way to the theatre until the lights went down and the previews started.

The movie started out not too bad. The fact they were all in an abandoned institute for the criminally insane freaked her right the fuck out, but she was doing ok with it. Of course, at first not too much happened. A bunch of people made corny jokes, and the main couple were played by two actors who weren't especially good at it. Then the movie proper started. She managed to just flinch the first few times something startling happened.

A particularly violent scene came onto the huge screen. She tried to keep her eyes downcast, knowing if she closed them it would be too obvious. But she knew if she didn't flinch, jump or groan in time with everyone else, they'd all know she wasn't watching—that she was scared. So she forced herself to watch, even though she really just wanted to get up and leave the room.

The third time she jumped a small scream escaped her as well. Vince glanced down at her face and found her eyes looking at her lap more than the screen. He used leaning over to whisper into her ear as an excuse to put an arm around her shoulders. "You ok?"

"Fine," she answered tightly.

"Not big on scary movies?" he asked.

His lips brushing against her ear almost had her forgetting the movie altogether. Then a ghost rushed one of the five guests of the party and she remembered with a start. "Not really, no," she whispered back.

He leaned closer to her and tightened his arm around her just a bit more. He figured she must feel slightly better when he heard her crunching and looked down to find her helping herself to his popcorn, her eyes focused intently on the screen for the first time since blood had started to flow. A moment later he watched her drain the last of her water out of the bottle. A moment after that she reached across him and picked up his Coke. After helping herself to his drink, she settled back against his side, still watching the movie. When blood splattered again, she buried her face into his side.

"Is it done yet?" she questioned a few seconds later.

"Yeah," he answered, laughing at her.

She made it through the whole movie. Though she did hide her eyes against him a few more times. When the lights came on they all stood up to leave. Walking across the parking lot, Tempest realized that she still had Vince's arm around her shoulders.

"You were terrified," Jesse was teasing her.

"No I wasn't."

"Then why did you scream like five times?"

"I got startled is all."

"Yeah, right," Jesse laughed back. They arrived beside the Jetta first. Letty, Leon and Dom all got into their cars, agreeing to meet at home. Jesse leaned on the roof of his car. "You were down right scared."

"You know I never did like that kind of movie."

"Then why did you go?"

"'Cause you wanted to," she answered with a shrug. "I'll be fine. It wasn't my first choice of movie, but it was alright."

"Ok. I'll see you guys at home," Jesse said before sliding into the Jetta.

"You wanna drive home?" Tempest asked Vince as they finished the walk toward the Skyline.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. I'm tired. I mean, if you can drive the Skyline. I don't wanna put you on the spot if you don't know how to shift backwards."

She wasn't trying to put him down, just acknowledge that not everyone knew how to drive a right hand drive car, so he didn't get mad. "I might be a little rusty, but I have taken Leon's out for a few spins."

She tossed him her keys. "Ok, have at it then." She slid into the passenger seat and watched as Vince fixed the seat to suit his length and started the car. He backed it out and headed for the expressway without incident. He was driving rather sedately. "I won't get mad if you really drive it. I've seen you drive and I know you're capable of competent driving over the speed limit."

He chuckled. "I was worried it might be some sorta test."

"Nope. Not this time. I know I shouldn't admit this to anyone, and please don't ever tell Jesse, but sometimes I just don't wanna drive. Sometimes I _like_ to be a passenger and just enjoy the scenery."

"I get why, I just don't agree." Vince glanced her way. "I hate to be a passenger."

"I do if I don't trust whoever's driving. But if I feel safe, I'm just as happy sometimes to sit back and relax."

They made it home slightly after the rest of the team did, because they didn't really rush, even after she gave Vince permission to do so. They just took it easy and left the stereo at a reasonable volume. After they parked and got out, Vince gave Tempest her keys back. They started up the lawn. "Thanks for letting me get chance at drivin' that car."

She shrugged off his thanks. "Hey, you let me drive yours."

When they pushed into the house, it was to find the whole place in darkness. The rest of the team must have headed for bed the moment they'd gotten in. "Guess they didn't wait up," Vince said. "You stayin' up awhile?"

"Naw, I think I'll turn in. See you tomorrow," she answered.

"I don't think I'll be too far behind you. Fuckin' shop."

She laughed softly. "Not really a morning person, are you?"

"Not really. But it really all depends on how I wake up," he said, and winked at her, watched her get flustered.

"I see," was all she said in answer. "Well, night."

"Yeah, see you tomorrow."

She went through the dark kitchen and he heard her travels down the stairs. He gave her a fifteen minute head start to be changed and settled on the couch before he headed down to his room. He noticed that again, she hadn't bothered to unfold and make the sofa bed up, but had rather curled up on the couch the way it was and wrapped a blanket around herself. He went into his room and shut the door.

His brain was too busy to let him sleep was the only reason he was up to hear the strange noises in the dark about an hour later. He lay still, waiting to see if whatever had been would be repeated. He wasn't able to place the noise or figure out what it could be. When he heard it again, he figured he'd have to get up and check it out.

He opened his door and listened again. The noise was coming from the direction of the couch. He started that way, curious if it was Tempest making the noise. When he got over beside her he realized she was in the middle of a nightmare. He crouched down beside her. "Hey, Trouble. Wake up. You're having a bad dream," he said, his voice low and he hoped soothing. She shook her head but she didn't wake up. She made a muffled noise which he was sure would have been a scream had she been awake. He reached out and shook her gently by the shoulder. "Hey, it's ok, wake up. It's just a dream."

She woke up then, saw him looming out of the darkness and started to let out a full blown scream. He put a hand over her mouth before she could really let loose and wake the whole place. Not only because he didn't want to listen to them all, but because he knew she'd be embarrassed to have the whole place know she'd had nightmares over a scary movie. "You're awake now, but you were having a nightmare. Don't scream, ok?" He waited for her to nod before he took his hand off her mouth. "You gonna be ok?"

"Yeah," she answered. Her voice was wavery and she didn't sound very convinced of her own answer.

"You sure?"

"I should be ok."

"You gonna have more bad dreams?"

If things when the way they normally would, the answer was yes. But did she really want to tell him that? He took the decision out of her hands. Her pause to think must have clued him in that the answer was yes.

"You wanna come bunk with me?"

Did she? She was sure he'd keep his hands to himself at this point. But could she say the same about herself? Unfortunately, an even more important question was could she stay in the infinite darkness of the strange basement room with no windows without scaring herself out of her mind? She nodded yes to his question with her lower lip caught between her teeth. She couldn't. She'd just creep herself out all night and they'd find her in a quivering mess in the morning, wild eyed and awake.

He cursed himself for the offer. He knew that she had no intention of picking up where she'd left off with him. So now he was going to have to try and get some sleep with the heat and sound of her sleeping next to him, knowing he had to keep his hands to himself. It was going to be a bigger hell on earth for him than any nightmare she could have would be for her. "Come on then," he stood up and held out a hand to her, which she took and allowed herself to be led into his room by. "Climb in," he told her and watched as she listened, instinctively sliding under the blankets on the opposite side of the bed from the one he liked to sleep on. He watched her settle before turning out the light and feeling his way around to the other side of his bed.

Knowing that he wasn't getting to sleep any time soon, he reclined on his back, hands under his head. He was still like that half and hour later when she rolled over in her sleep and curled up against his side with a sigh. When he felt her breasts press against his side and chest he fought a groan. He wanted to reach down and test the weight of one of them with his palm, feel her nipple pebble against his skin, pinch and roll it until he got her to make that little breathless noise she made. He wanted to taste her lips, her skin. But he couldn't. So instead he lay in the dark, unable to help the hard on that grew out of his thoughts of what he'd like to do to her, and have her do to him.

At some point he could only figure he'd managed to get some sleep because he woke up when, in the dream he was having, Tempest bit him over his collarbone as he brought her to climax and he came inside her with a snarl. To find out he'd just climaxed in his shorts from a wet dream while the girl who'd starred in it slept unaware beside him was downright embarrassing. What was he, thirteen?

He didn't know how on earth he was going to make it through the next week if she didn't totally forgive him. He knew that until she left he couldn't hook up with any other girl, whether they resumed their 'benefits' or not. But if the end result was not, he was going to be very frustrated by the time she left. But when she was just out of reach, it wasn't like any of the easy skanks really had much appeal anyway. Why would anyone want what they could offer when they were looking at so much more, sitting just beyond their hands? Maybe he and Leon and Jesse always settled for the second best chicks. But they didn't always have the real deal right in front of them then, either.


	18. Of Breakfast and Better Things

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By — _TempestRaces_

Chapter Eighteen – **Of Breakfast and Better Things**

He decided there was no way he was going back to sleep, and it didn't really matter all that much, since he was due to get up in half an hour anyway. Instead he got up and took a cold shower before he got dressed and headed upstairs. Mia was puttering around the kitchen, starting breakfast while wearing her housecoat. He didn't even grunt a greeting. He headed straight toward the coffee pot.

"Morning!" Mia chirped.

"Yeah, whatever," he growled in answer. He was far from happy to put up with miss 'I'm such a morning person'. Especially not after how he'd woken up.

"Bad night?"

"No, it was fuckin' super," he snarled sarcastically.

"Ok," Mia drawled. This Vince was more familiar, but she had to admit she preferred to deal with the other one. She left him to drink his first cup of coffee while she cooked. She knew he might be fit to at least speak to once it was in him. When she saw him drain the last mouthful she was filling the cup before he could stand.

"Thanks," he muttered, only because he knew it was expected of him.

"Sometimes I'm happier when you get up later, rather than sooner, you know that? You're always such a grump."

"Um," he answered in a grunt.

On that note Leon came up the stairs, followed by Tempest, who was pushing the heavy fall of her hair out of her face and still dressed in her cami and terry shorts from the night before, yawning into her hand, her green eyes still slightly dreamy and unfocused.

"What are you doin' up?" Mia asked the other girl.

"Everyone else gettin' up woke me up too. Figured I might as well get up and maybe finally do some shoppin' today." Tempest's tone belayed the fact she was also far from happy and far from a morning person. She walked into the kitchen and grabbed a bowl. "You got cereal?" she asked, frowning.

"That would imply that some days we didn't devour half a pig for breakfast around here," Mia grinned.

"I saw enough of how breakfast is around here to do me a lifetime, thanks all the same. I don't intend to have anything made of pig or potato with my breakfast. I'd settle for a glass of OJ and a bowl of something with whole grains though."

"There's Special K in there," Mia pointed.

As Tempest was filling her bowl, Dom and Letty straggled down to the kitchen and sat down. Jesse darted up to take his seat too. By the time Tempest turned around there was only Mia's seat left.

"Just take my place," Mia offered.

"Naw girl. You got work, you need it worse. I'll go sit in the living room."

"You're not gonna go sit alone to eat breakfast. Don't be silly. Sit down."

"No, I ain't takin' your seat. You got places to be. I don't. I'll just stand here in the kitchen."

"For cryin' out loud!" Vince pushed back from the table half way. "Just come sit right here and shut up," he said, indicating his left thigh.

"Well, when you ask so nicely how can I refuse?" Tempest asked, a fake sunny smile pasted on her mouth. He shot her a nasty look. "You always such an asshole in the morning?"

Mia burst out laughing. "Yeah. Yes he is." She'd never heard Vince asked a question like that point blank before.

"Not always," Vince answered, smirking in a way that left no question what he was implying.

Letty snorted through her nose as she tried to contain her laughter.

Tempest carried her bowl over the table and perched on Vince. She waited until she knew his mouth was full before leaning close to his ear, sliding her hand up over his neck and into his hair on the other side to hold his head steady as she got so close to him her lips brushed his earlobe. "So, how was it to know the reality of waking up happy, but have to make due with only dreaming about it this morning?" It was her turn to smirk in a way that left no possibility to mistake her meaning.

She knew. He choked on the food in his mouth. When he was done coughing he scowled at her. "I don't know what you're talkin' about."

She grinned. "I'm sure you don't." She crunched her way through a spoonful of her cereal, her lips still tipped up at the corners in a smile.

The smile on her face reminded him of the cat who ate the canary. He gave up on a suitable retort and settled for stuffing his mouth full again instead, feeling the flush creeping up the back of his neck. Thank god she had at least had the decency to make sure no one else heard her barb.

"That's how I thought it was," Tempest imparted, sly smirk still in place.

"So cuz, what are you doin' today?"

"Mall," she answered through a mouthful of cereal.

"Damn! Do I have to go too?"

"Not if you can give me good directions. I can shop alone."

"Not in L.A. you can't. You don't just wander off alone in Los Angeles."

"I can take care'a myself around a shopping mall Vince. I ain't twelve. I don't intend to wander, I intend to drive."

"If you stick to the Beverly Center and Glendale Galleria you'll be fine on your own," Mia broke in. "I wish I had time to go with you."

"I doubt it. I'm a power shopper. I don't browse. I look around but I look fast."

"You sound like Letty," Mia wrinkled her nose. "Why go shopping if you're not going to try on a bunch of stuff?"

"'Cause most of the time I don't need to try it on to know if I'll like it or not. I can tell on the hanger."

"That's just messed up. I don't think I'll ever meet another girl. I always get stuck meeting you half female, half 'other' types."

Rather than get upset, Tempest and Letty both laughed. "Hey, I'm all female when and where it counts baby," Tempest told Mia with a wink. She slurped the last of her milk out of her bowl and looked up. "Guess I'll get dressed. Jess, trace out on my map where I gotta go, would ya?"

"Sure. You sure you don't want me to come with?"

"Only if you wanna. I'll be ok on my own if you really don't wanna hit the mall."

"Think I'll go get the Jetta ready for races tomorrow instead. Meet me at the shop when you're done?"

"Only if _someone_," she shot a pointed look at Dominic. "Doesn't expect me to do any oil changes today."

"Hey, if you hadn't taken my whole team with you, we wouldn't have had so much work backed up."

"Yeah, and if you hadn't had me around, you'd still be watching air bubbles squirt out of a Sunfire in the brake fluid," she reminded cattily.

Vince pinched her ass under the table. She swung around to look at him. His look warned her to let it drop.

"You better watch your step, Slick."

"Go put some damn clothes on and get the fuck outta here," he snarled. "You got someplace to be tonight, remember?"

"I'll damn soon forget if you ever pinch my ass again."

This coaxed another laugh out of Letty. "Where does she have to be tonight?"

Vince grinned, some good humour finally added to his morning. "Tell her, Trouble."

"No." Tempest shook her head.

"On the way to races last night, I asked why she was happily sitting behind everyone in a tricked out Skyline. So she decided to pass everyone. Including Dom. I told her if she managed than the movies were on me. But if she didn't, she had to be at my mercy tonight. Needless to say, she lost."

"I didn't really wanna win. Car ain't broken in yet," Tempest mumbled.

"Yeah, sure." Vince didn't let her off the hook that easily.

"Hey, I own an RX-7. I know all their weaknesses and how to exploit them."

"I damn near died when you hit the nitrous on the expressway," Dom admitted. "You gave me an ok run. Didn't come all that close, but did ok. For an amateur."

"What do you think you are? Some kinda pro?"

"Well, yeah."

"Really? 'Cause I never knew there were pro leagues at breaking the law."

Vince pinched her again. She was skirting a little too close to some really dangerous territory. She was libel to make Dom blow up, hard core. This time she heeded his warning without anything to say about it. Before Dom could answer to her last barb she stood up. "Guess I'll get ready to head out." She started down the stairs after putting her bowl in the sink.

Vince got up and followed her down the stairs and into his room, where all her stuff still was. "You can't push him that far."

"I can't not either. I just don't know how to not. It's just how things are at home. We all have smart aleck answers for everything and everyone knows the score. It's how we play."

"Well, confine your play to something else down here. I really don't wanna have to have another fight with Dominic when he goes to choke the life outta you."

She pouted playfully. "And would you fight him over me?"

He backed her up to the wall, standing with one hand pressed flat to the plaster on either side of her head. "Yeah, if I had to. And another thing, if you ever say anything to me like you did this morning at the breakfast table again, I don't care who's watching. I'll take you over my knee and spank you."

She licked her lips and smirked. "Promise?"

"Oh yeah." He looked dead serious, the overtone of teasing which had been present in her words to him was lacking in his answer.

"Just be warned, I fight back."

"I'm scared."

"Be smarter if you meant it. You saw me with the dude at races. I know how to handle myself in a street fight Vince."

"Little girl, you can only handle yourself in a fight if the fight ever gets a chance to get started."

"You couldn't stop it, if you ever decided to take me over your knee."

"Oh yes I could."

She put her hands up to push him away, knowing neither of them was totally kidding, and unwilling to allow the debate to go on any farther. He half seriously thought he could restrain her and spank her for being bad, she half seriously thought due to the fact he'd underestimate her hugely she could take him. Who knew which was right?

As if he knew her thoughts, when her hands came up to push against his chest he grabbed one of them at the wrist, quickly moved it toward the other and snagged her other wrist between his fingers too. He brought both her hands up over her head and used his one to hold them flat against the wall. "See, no matter how good you are, no matter how fast, in close quarters it all comes down to strength."

She brought her knee up in a sharp jab. Only her exquisite control prevented him from having a nasty surprise in the form of her knee in his balls. She bumped him in the crotch with her knee hard enough to put a look of shocked surprise on his face. "Sometimes it comes down to exploiting the weaknesses of those you're fighting. Even if that weakness is only a tendency to underestimate an opponent. I could have you rollin' around on the ground right now if I wanted. So you better be thankful I like you too much to low blow you just to make a point."

He flattened her leg back into the wall and kicked her feet farther apart. He moved to stand between them, effectively pinning her helpless against the wall. She'd given away her only advantage. Sure, it had been done in the spirit of not seriously injuring him, and he knew that. But he was still going to show her who was boss, at least in the department of winning physical fights. "Yeah, but you didn't make your point, and now I'd love to see you get free."

There still wasn't really a hint of play in their exchange. It was an honest battle of wills. She hadn't appreciated being pinched on the ass, basically being told to shut up. He hadn't appreciated being embarrassed, even if the situation was only between him and her. Now they were going to fight it out, one way or the other it seemed. She knew she was running out of options for how to deal with him. She likely should have given him just a taste of what her knee in his balls would really feel like, instead of only giving him fair warning she could have done so. Seeing only one avenue left to her she leaned forward the slight amount needed and took his lower lip between her teeth before she bit down. Hard.

"Son of a bitch!" he roared. It came out kind of oddly, as she was still biting him.

She pressed a smidge harder, making him yelp. He used his free hand to tangle a handful of her hair and pulled back just as hard on her hair as she'd bitten down on his lip. She gasped at the sting and in doing so, released his lip. She watched him; looking downward from the extreme angle he was holding her head at, as his tongue tested the bloody inside of his lip. When his eyes met hers, she saw the anger there, barely restrained. But there wasn't only anger. There was something else too.

She watched as his mouth came toward hers. Knowing that there would be nothing but domination and anger if he kissed her in the frame of mind he was in, she wasn't willing to allow it. He wasn't going to show her domination with something that should have been affectionate. He might think he had her licked, but he was wrong. She allowed him to bring his face within millimetres of hers, within a hair of pressing his lips to hers. Then, with a sharp whip of her neck, she drove her forehead into the bridge of his nose. Due to the hold he still had on a handful of her hair, this hurt her a great deal as well. But she did get the satisfaction of being abruptly released as he swore and pinched his now bleeding nose.

"Don't ever, and I mean _ever_, think to hold me against my will and then use sex to punish me," she bit out through clenched teeth, obviously furious. "I'll be as wild and rough as you want me to be. But never because you're forcing me to meet you there. You might be stronger than me, but you sure ain't smarter, or more tenacious. I shoulda kneed you in the fuckin' balls when I had the chance."

He watched as, rather than dart off in fear to find her cousin, or someone else to serve as a buffer between them, she walked over to her things and started fishing around for an outfit for the day. She had to know he was livid, ready to explode. "If you were smart you'd get the fuck outta here until I calm down."

"Yeah, that's a right scary threat while you stand there bleeding all over yourself." She waved her hand toward him angrily in sarcasm. "I thought I just finished telling you I wasn't afraid of you, and proving to you that I got no call to be."

"If you were smart you'd run right now," he growled, low and serious, taking a step her way.

"I guess I ain't smart then, 'cause I sure as hell ain't lettin' you run me off." She looked at him, eyebrows knit together and a sneer on her mouth. "You thought you'd play the big man and scare little old me into falling over myself to concede to your superiority. I don't see it that way."

Why was it that he found her hotter than ever when she was fighting with him? It wasn't that he didn't take her anger seriously, because he did. He'd clearly be stupid not to when she'd almost broken his nose and bitten his lip off. Not that he was scared of her, but he did take her seriously. He found the way her nose wrinkled across the bridge when she sneered at him sexy. The way she roared at him without fear turned him on. He was going to have angry sex with her, and there was no other option. But first he had to clean himself up. There was nothing he could do with her while bleeding all over the place. The delay just pissed him off more so he stormed out of the room without a word to her, slamming the door closed behind him and going into the bathroom.

As soon as he was gone, she collapsed on the floor, her knees giving up on her. She put her head between her knees, taking a few deep breaths. Scared shitless. She'd been scared shitless. The rage on his face had been black and dangerous and she'd just pushed him back harder. He'd promised not to hit her in anger. And he hadn't, not really. But he'd looked capable of it, and that was scary enough. He'd looked like he was walking a razor thin edge, about to fall off the side of his control. She took another moment to regain her composure before she stood again and tried to find some clothes to put on. She schooled herself to look serene, just in case he came back. But inside she was anything but. She was a quivering mass of jelly. Her fight with him had literally been one step away from seriously violent. Seriously, no going back, someone's gonna need medical assistance right away violent.

Vince got himself cleaned up in the bathroom. She hadn't broken his nose, thankfully, and it didn't take very long to get the bleeding stopped. He realized he had gotten blood all over his shirt when he looked at himself in the mirror to see if he looked swollen. He didn't. She'd gotten him in just the right spot to give him a nose bleed but no visible damage. It was a different story for where she'd bitten him. He had marks from her teeth just under his lip. _Bitch_! Thinking about it brought back all the anger. Who did she think she was? He stalked back toward the closed door of his room and threw it open. He couldn't wait to sink into her and feel her buck around on him while she spit, hissed and clawed.

"You still in pissy humour, or did you get over yourself while you were out?" she asked. She was combing out her hair, and she didn't spare him a glance.

"I can't believe you fuckin' did that!"

"What? Didn't let you walk all over me 'cause you think you should be allowed?"

"Try to break my fuckin' nose."

"I didn't try to break your nose. If I had, you'd have one right now. I tried, and succeeded I might add, to give you a bloody nose."

He snarled at her, getting angrier by the second.

"Listen," she said, turning to face him. "You thought you'd make me feel small and helpless and that I'd beg you to go easy on me. That I wouldn't be able to defend myself and I'd have to concede you were able to dominate me. I'll never accept that, and that is why I went out and learned to protect myself in the first place. So if you wanna fight, we'll fight. But don't think it's gonna be all about you pinning me down and getting to feel superior, 'cause that shit won't fly. It's like they say. If you can't take the heat, stay the fuck outta the kitchen." She turned back to the mirror, ran the brush through her hair one final time and turned to the clothes she had laid out on the bed. Without looking his way again she pulled her cami and shorts off before starting to dress in the denim shorts and tank top she'd picked out for the day.

The anger that was still definitely singing in his blood mixed with lust again in a split second. It wasn't just seeing her naked in front of him that turned him on either. She was so confident. It was a turn on. Where was the fear she should have? He was almost twice her size. But instead she went toe to toe with him, not one idea it wasn't smart to be found in her head. He figured his mind had figured out before he had allowed himself to see that her unwillingness to be afraid of him in a fight would transmute into an unwillingness to be afraid of anything they would do in the bedroom. Someone as fearless as he was turned out to be a quality he couldn't resist in a bedmate. He was on her before she could have so much as one leg in her shorts, two hands buried in her hair and his lips pressing hard onto hers.

Sensing the difference between lust and punishment, this time she didn't try to escape. She angrily kissed him back, crushing her lips against his just as hard as he was giving, as her hands came up under his shirt and her nails bit into the skin across his shoulders. When his hands moved out of her hair and down to grab her ass before pulling her against him hard, she broke free of his mouth and nipped at the skin of his neck, her hands moving to tangle in his hair.

Before she could do much more than realize what he was doing, he used his grip on her ass to lift her up. Her hands moved down to brace against his shoulders for stability. Before she knew what he was thinking, he had one of her nipples between his teeth. Her head fell back as pleasure and pain mixed together, leaving her unsure where one ended and the other started. He nipped her again and she had a handful of his hair in her hand in a flash, using her grip to pull his head away from her. She leaned down from where he still had her lifted into his arms and crushed her mouth to his again. He slowly lowered her back down to her feet. She felt one of his hands slid down across the side of her neck, down over her breast. As his hand was caressing low on her belly, teasing her by staying just centimetres away from where she really wanted to feel his fingers, a sound intruded into her sensory world.

"Aw fuckin' son of a bitch!" he roared.

She realized the sound was Dominic calling Vince's name as soon as he'd stopped swearing. She was inclined to agree with Vince. She'd had a funny feeling that the sex they had been about to have was going to be of the stormy, violent, mind blowing kind. But she wasn't going to come right out and admit that either.

He kissed her, hard but not half as violent as things had been up until Dom had unknowingly butted in. "Hold that thought until tonight." He brushed her mouth with his again.

"You think I'm still goin' someplace with you tonight after all that?"

"Like it or not, you lost. You gotta pay up. 'Sides, don't act like you didn't want it."

She shrugged. "Maybe, but I wanna get to the mall now, and you're wanted at work, so what're ya gonna do?"

He turned to the door. "I'm gonna go to work, then I'm gonna take you out. You lost, so it is gonna happen."

"Yeah, well the ending of what we were doing before Dom called you isn't a forgone conclusion just 'cause I lost a car race in which I'd bet I'd be your date for the night."

"I'll see you at six." He wouldn't touch her sentence for love or money. Not while she was standing naked in his room, her lips red and swollen from the pressure of his mouth and her breasts were swollen in desire, her nipples hard from the attention he'd paid them.

"Only if I don't see you first!" she called after him, smirking. Once the door was closed behind him she pulled on her clothes and gathered her cards, money and shades. After she kicked her feet into her sandals, she opened the door and walked into the downstairs living room. Before she could start up the stairs, Vince pounded back down them. "Forget something?"

She had the nerve to be smug, standing there dressed to kill, in nothing but her casual shorts and tank top. She didn't have her own blood still splattered all over the front of herself. "Yeah, to change my shirt after someone fuckin' made me bleed all over it."

"Oops," she answered, faking a look of contrition. "My bad."

"You know, Dom already left for the shop, so he wouldn't be around to interrupt this time."

"Yeah, I guess he wouldn't. But I have other things to do. Better things."

He growled at her as he stalked over to where she was standing. "Better things?"

"Oh yeah. Like driving to the mall and spending a few hours shopping. Like knowing you want it, and I didn't give it up to you. Like thinking about you thinking about me, and what you wanted to do to me this morning all day long. Have a nice day, Slick."

She took off up the stairs before he could get a hold of her, and he heard the back door slam shortly after. He was going to have a _long_ day. He wasn't sure how nice it was going to be. He left for the garage after he changed his shirt. He was home by lunch time. He was so short with everyone Dom told him to 'get the fuck outta here, and don't come back until you're done being a fuckhead.' So he left. There was no sign of Tempest, and he wondered if she was still out shopping. Only a woman could spend more than an hour in the mall without getting a splitting headache.


	19. Of Black Dresses and Being Late

**Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Nineteen – **Of Black Dresses and Being Late**

Tempest was having such a good time wandering the mall and seeing all the shops she didn't have at home, she wasn't even paying attention to the time. When she got hungry she ate and went right back to shopping. She got a few small gifts for some of her friends and family and some stuff for herself. She didn't even know what time it was when she finished of the first shopping center. She just headed to the car and left for the second place Mia had told her to go to.

When she was done shopping she headed back to her car for the second time, again loaded down with packages. She threw them in the back seat and started the car. When the stereo finished loading up, she saw the time was six thirty. "Oh shit," she said to herself, a hint of a laugh in her tone. She was late, and he was going to think she'd done it on purpose. Couldn't be helped. By the time she got back she knew she was going to be a full hour late, and she never had managed to meet up with Jesse. He was going to be home before she got there, so she figured there was no need to go by the shop. She headed straight to the house. When she got there she parked, gathered her bags and headed in. "Hey guys!" she called out to people in the living room. Everyone but Vince was present and accounted for.

"How was the mall?" Jesse asked.

"Malls, and they were fine. I got a shit load of stuff."

"I see that." Jesse grinned.

Mia sighed. "Lucky! I haven't been shopping in forever."

"Well, I gotta go set this stuff down." Tempest headed for the kitchen, and the stairs to the basement. She got to the bottom and set her bags on the floor at the end of the couch before flopping back onto the sofa tiredly. Her feet were killing her. She couldn't remember the last time she'd spent so many hours walking around malls without at least needing to drive between several and getting a break while she traveled. On that note, she wondered why she wasn't getting ripped a new one by Vince yet. She picked herself up off the couch with a great deal of physical determination and headed toward the closed door of his room. She didn't bother with the formality of knocking, figuring her activities in the room entitled her to walking in without announcing herself first. It didn't matter in the end anyway, as no one was there. There was a note on the bed, amongst the pile of things scattered across the surface.

She picked up the note and started to read. "_I figure you're gonna show up home around seven thirty just to spite me, and then decide to get ready, so I'll be around for you at eight. You better be ready by then, or you're going however I find you. Take that as fair warning because I'm serious. Later, V._"

She was still laughing about how well he'd guessed what she would do to get back at him as she got into the shower. By seven thirty she was showered and her hair was done. Of course, she'd done nothing more elaborate than working something promising to fight frizz into it after she'd washed it. She knew without being told that if he showed up to get her, and it was either up or straight, she'd be fighting with him until she gave in and changed it. That was where her confidence ended. He hadn't told her where they were going, so she had no idea what to wear. With a wicked little smile, accompanied by a chuckle, she made up her mind.

Vince showed up to pick up his 'date' at just after eight. He'd told her six, he'd called home at seven and she still hadn't been back. He was hoping, for her sake, she hadn't totally blown him off. He'd expected her to make him wait, but if she stood him up, things might get ugly. When he walked into the house, the rest of the team was watching TV. "Hey," he said as he stood in the doorway of the living room.

"Hey," Letty answered, grinning. "How're you?"

"Good. You guys get everything finished up ok?"

"Yeah. It was amazing how smooth things were when you weren't there being an asshole to everyone," Dom answered. It was clear from his tone he wasn't kidding and still wasn't over needing to send Vince home.

"Well, you knew there was a reason why I stopped working with you in the first place," Vince reminded. "This whole me fillin' in for Jesse thing wasn't my idea to begin with."

"Maybe not, but you said you would. You didn't say you would, but that you'd make me pay for asking you."

"Wasn't my intention to do that either. It just kinda worked out that way."

"So, where you takin' her?" Letty broke in. She knew there was no need to elaborate what she was referring to.

"Dunno," Vince answered.

It was obvious he did know, and didn't feel like sharing with her in front of the 'class'. She figured she'd remind herself to ask him again later, sometime after the fact when they had a few minutes alone.

"Where is she anyway?" Vince asked, still looking at Letty.

"Downstairs, as far as I know."

With a nod, Vince headed back toward the kitchen and, through it, the basement stairs. He started down into the murk of the basement. He found her in his room, sitting on the bed, reading. "You ready?"

"Guess so," she answered. She was having her doubts whether or not going anywhere with him was a good idea. What if he managed to tell her something like he had on the way to the movie that had her looking at him with that whole 'awwww' thing in her mind? It wasn't good for her to let herself feel that way about Vince, and she knew it. But she'd made her devil's bargain, and now she had no choice in the matter. "Where we goin'?"

"Out."

"Gee, really?" She looked up at him. "No shit. I meant where exactly are we goin' when we leave this house?"

"You'll see when you get there. It isn't like you have any choice in the matter anyway. My choice, remember?"

"You didn't tell me a thing about what we're doin' or where we're goin'! How'm I supposed to know if what I'm wearin' is ok?" She didn't really care, truth be told. She just wanted to draw his attention to her attire.

Vince looked her over from head to toe. She had her hair done the way she knew he liked it, long and wild. She had on what he assumed was her 'little black dress'. It was cut deeply into her cleavage and fitted across the front. The neck was halter style, wrapping up around her neck to tie in the back, and leaving her shoulders bare. It skimmed her hips softly before flaring out slightly. It fell to a point just above her knee on one side, and a point half way down her thigh on the other, the hem finished on a flowing diagonal. Her shoes were something a mile high, black and strappy, criss crossing up her legs to end in small bows below her knees. "What you're wearin' is fine. Let's go."

"My god, are you gonna be this pissy and bossy all night?" she asked, standing up off the bed.

"Maybe. Are we goin' or what?"

She rolled her eyes. "Alright already. Shit." She started for the door.

As she walked past him to push out the door, he finally saw the rest of her dress. Or lack thereof. The back was practically nonexistent. The only parts of her covered in the rear were a small section of the back of her neck, and her ass. The back plunged straight past the small of her back, terminating somewhere just below where her hips flared out past her waist. One thing he was sure of, no matter how much he tried to compare her to Letty in his head, he knew he had never and would never see Letty dressed up thusly. Everything about the little black dress lovingly caressing Tempest screamed feminine. It was the first outfit he'd ever seen on her that did so, but he couldn't deny it once he'd seen it.

As she walked up the stairs, Tempest mused on her thoughts about Vince's clothes. He was wearing black pants that might have been slacks, not jeans, and a black tee shirt that was just somehow classier than his normal style. What he was wearing wasn't really fancy by any stretch, but he somehow managed to pull it off in such a way that it looked dressy, in a casual way. She should have felt over dressed next to him, but she didn't. Of course, she had also wanted to shock and wow him. She wasn't sure if she'd managed or not, but she'd tried. She thanked god that even if she did lack confidence by times, she had the brash attitude to just brazen it out and pretend she didn't lack anything.

She paused in the door of the living room. "I guess we're off. Someone wish me luck."

"For what?" Letty asked.

"So that we both make it home alive," Tempest answered with a smirk.

Letty laughed. "Good luck."

Mia looked at her new, pale friend through narrowed eyes. "I can't believe you let me think you thought a coloured, clean undershirt was dressed up for you."

"Well, when it comes to car racing, it is. I have the shop undershirts and the dressy undershirts. I don't get dressed up much fancier very often. Hell, I've been known to wear a nice wifebeater and jean shorts out to clubs all summer long."

"The only difference between you'n Letty is Letty wouldn't be caught dead in that dress."

"You got that right," Letty agreed, grinning.

"Well, I so rarely wear anything but jeans and tank tops I decided to go all out."

"We goin' sometime tonight, or are you gonna stand there and shoot the shit with Letty and Mia all night?"

Tempest looked at Vince over her shoulder. "Classy V. Real classy."

Letty and Mia laughed uproariously. "You hit the one thing ol' Coyote ain't for sure!" Letty assured. "He's many things, but classy ain't one of 'em."

"If I didn't know he was born and raised here I'd think he was a country as they came. I seriously wonder where his pickup truck is parked some days," Tempest came back, grinning as she made fun of Vince with Letty.

Vince growled. "Let's go. You girls can make fun of me all you want tomorrow."

"I'll hold you to that!" Letty called, still laughing as she watched Vince marshal Tempest out the front door. When the door was closed she looked around at her friends. "Is our Vince really taking a girl out? Like taking her someplace, not just running into her randomly and taking her back here for a few hours?"

"It looks that way," Leon said, grinning. "And it was his idea."

"There really is a first time for everything," Letty answered, shaking her head.

"I didn't take anything with me but myself," Tempest told Vince as they walked down the front walk toward his car. "I wasn't kidding when I said I never learned to do the whole purse thing and there really isn't anywhere in this dress for cell phones and cards. Hell, there's barely room in here for me."

"You won't need anything. Just get in the car."

She stopped walking. "Ok, why are we still doin' this when you're in such a bad mood? We might as well stay home, you can swill a few dozen beers, and we'll just watch movies with everyone else."

"I'm not in a bad mood."

"You sure as fuck coulda fooled me."

With a pointed look at her to illustrate his frustration Vince opened the passenger side door of his car and stood beside it. "Please get in the car."

"Better." She got into the Maxima with a satisfied smirk. When he joined her she looked over at him in speculation. "You ever gonna tell me where we're goin?"

"When we get there I will."

"This isn't a carefully constructed plot to get me into the middle of no where so it's easier to ditch the body, is it? 'Cause it'd only be fair to give me a sporting chance and I can't run in these shoes."

"That wasn't my plan, but strangely enough, ever time you open your mouth your idea starts to have more and more appeal."

"Just remember, you never know where women can hide weapons."

He looked at her for a moment before turning his eyes back to the road. "If you have anything hidden under that dress I don't think I wanna know where."

"No you likely don't."

He sighed at the mental gymnastics her comment started. He couldn't get her words from the morning to stop replaying in his mind. Both on the topic of leaving him wanting her all day and on the subject of the night not necessarily ending the way he thought it would. When he glanced over at her and saw her looking back at him, that little secretive smirk he couldn't figure out and hated because it made him nervous about what was going on in her head behind it, on her face he got worried for what she was planning to do to him. She was still pissed off, of that he was sure. She was taking a little too much pleasure in bating him. He knew it was revenge. Just like the little scrap of black she was wearing and calling a dress, and the mile high puzzle shoes, and the wild tangle of curls falling over her shoulders and down her back, and the delicate scent of whatever perfume she'd sprayed herself with were all part of that same revenge scheme. She was out to make him pay.

"So, how far away is where ever we're goin'?"

"About another fifteen minutes. You can turn the radio on if you want."

"You mean I'm allowed to touch the stereo? Wow. What did I do to deserve that privilege?"

"I dunno. Nothing really. You haven't been particularly good to me lately." He reached over and turned the radio on before she could, and set it for a local top forty station. "So I guess I'll do it."

"I haven't been particularly good to you?" she asked. Her tone was incredulous. "Ok pot, meet kettle! Shit, I mean," she trailed off, not even sure how to put her frustration in words. Did he really want her to go into how she was wearing the outfit she was hoping that she'd finally be able to keep his attention off the other girls long enough for him to realize who he was actually with?

"Ok, ok. I get it. We haven't really been all that good to each other. And I stared my fair share of it. Happy?"

"It's a start, I guess." She watched as Vince signalled his lane change and took an exit for Silver Lake. They fell mostly silent as they navigated the streets. He pulled into a dingy looking neighbourhood and drove down the streets.

"We're likely gonna end up walkin' a bit. It's impossible to park around here and I sure ain't lettin' no valet drive my car."

"As long as we don't have to run, I don't mind a little walk."

"Why do you women wear those shoes? If they're that uncomfortable and cripple you why wear them?"

"Because they match our clothes?" she quipped. He gave her a look that clearly said 'be serious'. "Because they make our legs look long and shapely and make men think about what our long, shapely legs could be doing. Because they lift and shape our derrières, force us to put a slight arch in our back, which forces us to stick out our chests. All of that makes men, um, sit up and take notice."

"I'm sorry I asked."

She smirked. "Really? Why?" He gave her a dirty look. Her answer was laughter. "Aw V, are you thinking about what I think you're thinking about?"

Only if she knew he was thinking about her legs wrapped around his waist while he had his way with her, with those shoes still tied around her calves. He leered at her. "I'd imagine so. My thoughts on certain matters ain't exactly hard to guess."

"No they aren't."

Vince parked the car and got out. She followed his lead, moving around the nose to meet him on the sidewalk. He started to walk down the street and she followed him, rushing to keep up. "Is there a race to get there or what?" she called, unable to match his long stride in her outfit.

"No, why?" he asked when he turned around to find her. She was a few paces behind.

"Because you're practically running."

"You've never had trouble keepin' up with me when we walked places before."

"I've never been wearing dress shoes around you either. Just 'cause I can outrun in you kicks or flip flops doesn't mean I can in heels."

"I never said you could outrun me. I said you never had trouble keepin' up."

"I can keep up with you easily. I can outrun you nicely too, if I'm in sneakers. Not now. So either find a way to let me keep up, or I'm goin' to have to trip you so you hurt your ankle or knee and can't keep up with me."

An angry retort about wanting to see her try came to his lips but died there. He didn't want to see her try. She'd already given him a bloody reason to stop underestimating her once today. He didn't need another. Not if he didn't want to end up seriously hurting her. He took a deep breath to calm his anger and held a hand out to her. "We ever gonna get where we're goin'? Or are we gonna fight in the street all night?"

"Well, excuse me if I don't want to run along behind you like some faithful dog, ok."

"Damn you're hard on the head. Shit. I didn't know just how prissy a set of fancy shoes and dress could make a female."

"Oh, I ain't prissy. But unless you want me to show the whole world what I have on under this outfit, I can't run down the street."

He started off at a slower pace than she even required, unwilling to think of her showing all the other men on the street what was under her dress. Like she knew why they were strolling all of a sudden when they had been sprinting, she chuckled at him. "What?" he asked. His tone showed he knew her laughter was at his expense, and he didn't like it.

She laughed another moment before she answered. "I just find it funny that all of a sudden we're out for a Sunday stroll. You the jealous type, V?"

"Sorta looks that way," he grumbled. He then watched her grin at a middle age man who walked past them on the sidewalk. Once the man was past he snarled down at the witch by his side. She threw her head back and laughed at his actions.

"I still wish you'd tell me where we're goin'."

"We'll be there in a minute and you can see where we're goin'. Why're you so impatient?"

"'Cause knowin' you, there's food involved in this and I'm starving. I only had a quick lunch at the mall and then spent the whole afternoon ranging around it. It's past my dinnertime."

"Mine too, but I'm not the one who knew she had plans at six and blew them off until eight."

"I'm not the one who caused the incident that gave 'she' a feeling of needing to get back at you."

"Don't delude yourself Trouble. Just by being yourself is reason enough to cause a lot of fights between us. It ain't all on me."

"It sure ain't my fault you just can't handle a woman who knows what she wants and how to get it either."

"I think I've shown you enough times that I handle you ok."

"No, you handle sex with me ok. When you try to handle the whole package, you fall to pieces. But that's cool. I knew there was a reason why I was single. I guess I just haven't found the guy who can put up with all I am yet."

She wasn't teasing, not really. She wasn't being mean to him, or trying to make him feel inadequate either. Just making a blanket statement acknowledging the fact her single nature was at least partially her fault. She was being serious, he figured with a frown. He decided to try and bring back a light mood. "Really? You think that guy's out there somewhere?" he teased.

"Yeah, I know he is." She glanced up at him, trying to read his mood from his face. He wasn't giving anything away, and it left her worried whether he was angry or really curious. Was he angry it seemed like she was basically saying that he couldn't handle her long term and that she knew he would never be the man for her? Or was he just curious to know why she thought so, and relieved by the same thing.

"So, the ideal guy for you, the one who can handle the whole package, what's he like?"

He seemed actually curious. "Well," she thought about his question. She hadn't ever just compiled a list before. She just always assumed when she met the right man, she'd know him on sight. It felt more than a little weird to be talking about her ideal man when another man was holding her hand while they walked down the street together. "He's smart but funny. Strong, and probably the silent type in a lot of situations. But he does know when to speak up. Since I can be loyal to a fault, I guess he should be pretty loyal too, otherwise things will be too one sided. He better be pretty tough and confident too. When I get pissed off, I can get abusive so he better be able to give back as good as he gets. No matter what set me off, the nearest person ends up the target of my wrath, deserving or not. I wouldn't be able to put up with a guy who let me walk all over him. I'd just lose all respect for him and that'd be that. I'd run rough shod all over him."

"You acknowledge that about yourself?" he asked incredulously.

"Yeah, why not? I should get with a guy who's a doormat over and over again just to end up thinking there isn't a man on earth who can keep up with me? Better to know I need an assertive guy from the start and just pass on the passive ones. Indecisiveness drives me crazy in everyone, let alone in a guy I'm gonna spend huge amounts of my time with. If I ask him what he wants to do and he can't tell me, or I have to choose all the time, I'll just go out of my mind. I like my turn behind the wheel, but I like to take my turn to just kick back and put the responsibility on someone else some times too."

"So are you sayin' you like the dominate type?"

"No, I'm not. I don't think of people in terms of type either. I think of them as a sum of their characteristics, so there is no finite amount of 'types' to pick from. I'm saying that I'd like to find a guy who knows what he wants, both of himself and of me, and isn't too timid to go after it, or speak up for it. I'm sayin' that sometimes I like to let someone else decide for me, in certain circumstances and if I'm around someone who never can, I'll just go mad. I need to be able to respect a guy in my life, and if he can't make up his mind, or won't stand up to my shit, I can't respect him and things between us just won't work."

"You ever come close to findin' this perfect guy?"

"Close, once or twice," she told him.

He hated the fact he couldn't read the look on her face. It felt almost like she was implying he might be one of those close calls. He wasn't sure if he was happy about that, or terrified.

"We almost there?" she asked, swinging his arm forward and back as though she was a young child walking with a favoured adult.

It made him laugh, and he was glad that something had broken the mood. "Yeah, almost. Just around the corner."

"You sure the car is safe so far away from us in such a, well, bad neighbourhood?"

"The security's on and most people would be too smart to mess with that car."

"But you're not full of yourself or anything," she chuckled.

"No, not really. Just sure of some things in life, and that my car is pretty safe in certain neighbourhoods is one of them."

"I see. So the good people of this neighbourhood are scared of you, or the people you work for?"

"Likely both," he answered before he could think better of it. "There must be places where you're from that everyone knows you in and knows not to mess with your shit." She wrinkled her nose in thought, and he found the way her skin crinkled across the bridge intriguing.

"I don't think I'm that well known. Well, at work. Everyone at work would know better than to mess with my shit, unless they wanted to get yelled at for half an hour on purpose."

"You been in many fights?"

"Not so many, no. It's strange, but normally all I have to do is talk a little smack and most people just seem to decide it isn't worth messin' with me. I've never had to do all that much actual fighting, just threaten it."

"You have one hell of a smart mouth, and sharp tongue. I guess most people just figure out it'll be like tryin' to take a bone from a pitbull before they even try."

"Maybe," she answered with a smirk.

"Well, this is it," he told her, stopping her travel with the grip he still had on her hand.


	20. Of Insights and Honky Tonks

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 20 – **Of Insights and Honky Tonks**

She looked up at the façade of the building they were standing in front of. It was painted with colours which had no doubt been brilliant when they had first been applied. Now they were faded, but still pretty, soft green and red with a splash of yellow where the name of the establishment was painted. "Cha Cha Cha Café?"

"Yeah, come on," he said, tugging at her hand.

"You gonna vouch for this place too? You sure do have a habit of picking restaurants that don't look like much on the outside."

"You ever gonna learn to trust me?"

"I do trust you. But you'd eat anything, so I just don't know if you're the best judge of what's fit to eat."

"This place does a lot of business, so if they were poisoning people, I don't think they'd have been in business for the last fifteen years, and as busy as they are. We're only gonna get a table at this hour of Friday because—"

"You know someone, I get it," she cut him off mid-sentence. It was kind of cool to know someone who 'knew someone' almost everywhere you went when it got you good tables and other perks though. Even if the way he'd met all those people was more than slightly dubious.

"Stop runnin' that mouth for five minutes so we can get a seat and get some food, ok?"

"Fine," she sighed and allowed herself to be dragged through the front door by the hand.

They were seated quickly, given to the fact again that Vince 'knew someone' she was sure. They were handed menus, and then the waitress walked off. Tempest quickly found her menu taken from her. "Hey!"

"You won't be needing that. I'll pick for you."

"I'm capable of deciding what I want to eat."

"Yeah, but for tonight you don't get to decide anything. It's my turn." He seemed to consider that for a moment. He handed her back her menu, the back page facing up. "I guess you can decide what you're having to drink."

"Gee thanks mister. Have you always been so generous, or did you have to work at it?" He made a sarcastic face at her, but didn't have a verbal retort. She let it drop, choosing to look over the menu whether he was going to let her order on her own or not. There was a surprising quantity of food that sounded really good. Had she been picking her own meal, she knew it would have taken her some time to decide. She finally did as she had been instructed to do in the first place, and flipped to the drink menu. "What're you having to drink?"

"What's that matter?"

"Just curious," she answered. She met his eyes and he gave her a look she just knew was telling her the answer was obvious. "Corona?"

"See, you're smarter than you think."

"Ok, well I don't do beer. What's Sangria?"

"Some sort of wine punch. It's supposed to be good, if you like fruit drinks."

"But of course, you don't."

"Not when there's beer. Are you feelin' ok?"

She shook his hand off her forehead. "No, I'm feelin' frustrated because I'm trying to have a conversation with you."

He laughed. "You wanna try the Sangria?"

"Sure," she answered. He went back to reading his menu while she looked around the interior of the restaurant. There were festive touches all over the place. It felt almost like they'd stepped off a particularly dirty L.A. street and straight into the fresh air of the Caribbean. There were shrines to the Madonna and to southern American soccer stars all around the place, and beaded necklaces hanging off the walls. There were no overhead lights to speak of. The whole place was lit only by candles and mini-lights hanging from the walls. It was fun, and funky. It wasn't all that romantic, not in the least, but it was interesting, and there was enough space between the tables to lend an air of privacy, but not enough to make the place feel posh. It wasn't a place to cater to someone who expected crystal glasses and linen tablecloths, but it was perfect for what they were looking for. Or at least what she assumed they were looking for. Fun and friendly without the overtone of serious interest that a nicer place might have given off.

The waitress came back and Vince ordered for both of them, and since she hadn't even really been allowed to spend much time looking at the menu, she didn't have a clue what he picked. Their drinks arrived first, and she picked up the ice cold glass of red liquid she was presented with. She sniffed it first, bringing it under her nose. It smelled pretty good, considering she didn't even like wine. She looked over at Vince before taking a drink and found him chuckling. "What?"

"Do you sniff everything before you put it in your mouth?"

"Yes," she answered defensively.

"Why?"

"To make sure it smells like good to eat, that's why." She looked at him, daring him to find fault with that.

"It's a drink. Of course it smells good to eat."

"It's a drink I've never had before so how do I know that until I sniff it?" She was saved from hearing his answer by the arrival of their food. Or at least the appetizer portion of their meal. There was a huge platter of many different foods and a salad, which was placed in front of her. "You tryin' to imply I need to watch my weight?"

Vince looked up in shock. Even he knew better! "No," he was quick to assure. "Why?"

"You get a heap of deep fried food and I get salad."

"You like salad. You can help me eat this stuff too."

She raised one eyebrow and looked at him in question.

"Ok, you can help me eat this stuff too if you help fast."

She laughed. "I might wanna try a few of those things, but I guess the salad smells good." It had fruit in it, and the dressing smelled of pineapple, one of her favourite foods. She snagged a bunch of stuff off the platter and put it onto a napkin before she tried her salad. She then nibbled at something that turned out to be a deep fried banana as far as she could figure.

Vince watched her eat. He was always surprised by the delicate way she ate when there was nothing delicate about the way she did anything else. She took tiny bites, chewed very well, and ate slowly. She didn't make any kind of mess, and used her napkin frequently.

"Is this a banana? Is this really a deep fried banana?"

Her question brought him out of his thoughts. "No, it's a deep fried plantain. It's almost the same thing, but not quite."

"It's good and all, but who ever thought up deep frying fruit?"

"Dunno. If it's good, just eat it. Did you try any of the dip?"

"No, what is it?"

"Its dip Trouble." He rolled his eyes at her. "Just try it and if you don't like it don't eat anymore." He watched as she dipped one of the plantain chips into the mole dip and sniffed it before putting it in her mouth. The blissful look that crossed her features did odd things to his body. "Good?"

She moaned lightly and nodded in answer. "Give me more deep fried banana with whatever that is on it and no one gets hurt."

He laughed at her answer before stuffing his mouth full again. He fought a desire to scoop her up and take her home to make her moan some more. With perfect timing, just as they polished off the appetizers their waitress arrived with the main course.

Whatever it was she was eating was delicious, and she had to give Vince credit. He'd managed to pick out a vast variety of things she liked, even if she had no idea what they were and had never seen them before in her life. When they finished and the waitress offered the dessert menu she tried to say no, but Vince wasn't hearing of it.

"I'm too full for desert."

"Tough, you better find room. I won't eat desert in front of you if you don't order something and I'm having desert."

"Fine, whatever." She caved easily. Her stomach was full of good food and the wine drink in her glass never seemed to disappear. Every time she figured she must be almost done of her glass it seemed to be full again. She was thinking that it was some very creative serving, instigated on Vince's behalf which was responsible. She surprised herself by making a respectable dent in her tropical fruit flan when it arrived.

They sat around making small talk for about half an hour after their meal. Tempest was glad, she knew there was no way she could ever have gotten up and walked anywhere without waddling right after eating so much food. "So what now?" she finally asked.

He shrugged. "Wanna go for a drive?" In truth he hadn't really planned anything beyond dinner. Well, maybe he'd planned how he'd like the night to end, but since it was only ten, he figured he had a few hours to fill in first. Assuming she didn't plan to make him pay a while longer for the fights they'd had.

"Yeah, let's go."

They left the restaurant and started the walk to the car. As they walked down the sidewalk he looped an arm over her shoulders. "So, you been right downtown yet?"

"Nope. Jess seemed to think that it was too dangerous for me to go down there. He's likely right about the getting lost part of what he told me, but I don't think it'd be too dangerous."

"He was right not to let you take off downtown on your own. But we can cruise around down there now if you wanna."

"I'd like to be able to say I saw the place when I go home. I don't wanna admit to my friends and family that I got to the beach once, car races four or five times, and mostly worked in a garage. And not even a nice garage as far as garages go."

"How is Dom's garage not a nice garage?" Vince felt himself get defensive on his friend's behalf. Mr. Toretto had built that garage, and he'd learned all he knew about cars there.

"Don't get your panties in a twist Slick. But as far as the garages I've worked in go, it's just not that nice. It's not well lit, it has no lifts. My work at home has eleven bays, all of them have lifts less than five years old. We have in floor heating and the place is lit up like midday all the time, with florescent lighting and with actual windows to the outside world. We have a six car wash bay and a three thousand square foot body shop. We have six computers all on the internet, a bulk oil dispenser, an alignment machine, and two of our hoists can handle up to twelve thousand pounds."

"Dom doesn't need any of that stuff."

"If you worked there more you wouldn't say he didn't need hoists. You'll never go back to rolling around under a car on a creeper once you've learned what it's like to be able to raise them six feet off the ground safely and have all that space to work in."

"Dom does ok the way things are."

"Calm down V. I wasn't trying to put down Dominic or his shop, ok? Shit." She shook her head. "I was just saying I didn't have to drive over three thousand miles to work in a garage when I work in a better equipped one day in, day out back home. My family and friends are used to me clomping home in work boots with dirt under my nails, grease in my hair and tears in my clothes, ok?"

"Sure," he answered, surrendering to the fact she hadn't meant to insult Van's shop, even if in his mind she _had_ done so. They reached his car then and he helped her into the passenger seat before going around and sliding behind the wheel.

"You better watch out," she warned, laughter in her voice.

"For what?"

"I'm about to think you're a gentleman. What then?"

"I'm sure it won't take me long to do something else that has you changing your mind in a hurry."

"You're likely right," she agreed.

They pulled away from the car. "Can I ask you somethin'?"

"Shoot."

"Why won't you move down here to be with Jesse? He really wants you to, and you could get a pretty good job. Not to mention the money you could rake in racin' the Skyline."

"Well," she blew a forceful breath out through her nose. "That's a long, touchy, personal answer. You sure you wanna go there?"

"Yeah, why not? You about to tell me you go two kids no one knows about hidden in some hick city in Canada?"

"No," she chuckled at the thought of her having kids, let alone two. "It's just not something that I really talk about a lot. I'm always thinkin' that it makes me look bad, that it'll make people think less of me. Well, people who know me now and didn't know me back in school."

"Why would it?"

"Ok I'll tell you! Shit. Ok. My whole way through grade school, I was a perfect student. I always got E's in elementary, which stood for excellent and was the highest you could get. I tutored the other kids on the computer and on reading. I wasn't much for spelling, but it was my only weak spot really. Other than I was never much good with sharing, so I got some 'does not play well with others comments. But I only didn't skip a grade or two because my mom didn't want to let me."

"You're a brain, you told me that already."

"Yeah, but I was a _real_ brain. I'm not just sayin' that. I graduated from both junior high and high school with honours. I don't think I missed more than five days of high school over all three years. And I took all the hard courses, calculus, geometry, advanced chem. and biology, and physics. I thought I was going to the Veterinary college, so I needed good grades and a lot of science. I was a total geek. My only saving grace was at least I wasn't a band geek too."

"I thought you took auto tech in high school? How'd you have time for all that other stuff too?"

She wrinkled her nose in thought. "Well, you gotta know that school where I went to school isn't like school here. Auto shop was just a class I took. It wasn't like I got a technical education and left high school knowing cars. I just had one class of instruction in it. Same as I took a class in typing and one called arts and crafts. I mean, I couldn't take math and literature and science all day long. I needed some easy courses."

"I don't think Mia took an easy course her whole life."

"Mia wants to be a doctor and if she didn't take a single bird course she's far more dedicated than I am. But I also held down a full time, or practically full time job the whole time I was in high school."

"Why?" he asked, shocked that anyone taking such a heavy course load would also work a full time job.

"'Cause my mom worked her ass off just to keep us in a nice place to live and make sure we had good food to eat, and that I had all the things I wanted. There wasn't extra money for me to have the designer clothes I wanted and there certainly wasn't enough money for me to have a car. Not if I was waiting for my mom to buy it for me. So I went out and got a job to pay for my own car and insurance and clothes and to have money to hang out."

"Liquor money," he laughed.

"No. Not at all. I didn't start drinking until last summer when I turned nineteen. That's the legal age where I'm from. I didn't drink in high school because I wasn't old enough. That's what I mean. I was the perfect student, the almost perfect child. The stereotypical good girl who rarely stepped outta line. Worst I ever did was mouth off and speed."

He found that hard to juxtapose with the woman who was sitting in his car now. The one who'd been drinking illegally all over dinner, for one thing. "So then what happened?"

"I hit university to get my first degree, the one I had to have to apply to Vet college. University was a total culture shock for me. I went from a totally regimented life to one where none of my professors cared if I showed up or not. The freedom went to my head. I started skipping classes. I failed, flunked out. The first time I'd ever failed at anything, let alone anything education related. It only took a few weeks of full time working at fast food to know I couldn't do that for the rest of my life. So I went to college and took auto tech. But for those two weeks that I was workin' at a hamburger joint full time I was a total wild child. I guess I never totally got over it. How it made me feel to fail. It was like my whole life spent being a good girl had been a total waste. After all, where had it gotten me? I'd failed at something that I had, at one point, really wanted to do. Something that by all rights I should have been able to sail through. I'd always sailed through school. I'd never had to work for it. I just showed up, wrote tests and got ninties. I never studied, I never did homework. I just floated through. Then I failed at school. It was unheard of. It was like that failure made me decide that being good really didn't have any advantages. But at least it did make me turn my life around as far as picking a career. But failing at school for the first time hit me pretty hard."

"And now you're happy, so none of this explains why you won't move down here and make good money to do what you trained to do."

"Because when I was taking my college course I swore to myself that I was wasn't a failure. That I wouldn't fail at anything else. That I would make it as a technician, and be just as good as all the guys I learned with. But I can't just say I am because _I_ know I am. I have to prove it."

"You have. You worked just as hard as the rest of us at the shop the other day. You did just as much work as the guys did on your Skyline."

"Well, thank you for noticing and for telling me that, but that's not how I want to prove myself. I want to get my licence just like all my classmates so that no one will ever be able to tell me that I'm not as good as they are. I'll have passed all the same tests, done all the same things, and there'll be no question that I'm good at what I do."

"Why does that matter?"

"Dunno, but it does. It has something to do with how the people where I'm from are different. It was still next to impossible for me to find a job back home because the vast majority of the people around didn't think a woman had any business working in the trade. Most of them didn't even doubt I was capable. They just didn't think it was right for me to do it. But a lot of them think I jus plain can't too. All just because I'm a chick. They think that I should cut hair or be some man's secretary. And while those are both fine jobs, they aren't what I want to do with my life or my time. When I have my licence I'll know I didn't fail at this. I'll know that this time I was successful."

"How long until you're done of your licence?"

"Another two years."

He nodded. "And then?"

"And then, if I still think I'd like to give Cali a try, and Jesse is still after me to move down here, I'll think about it."

"But you told him that you'd think about it now."

"I know I did. But it's so hard to say no to that face."

Vince laughed and she joined him. "Yeah, he can be hard to say no to, can't he?" he asked.

"Always was."

She realized around then that downtown had slowly crept up and surrounded them. They took to the inner city streets and cruised around for awhile. He pointed out some places that he thought might be of interest to her and she looked suitably impressed with the size and populace of America's largest city. After an hour of driving around observing the city at play, they caught a red light and stopped to wait it out.

When Tempest started to giggle while looking out her window, it snagged his attention. "Wha?"

"That guy in the Civic next to us wants to race you."

"How'd you figure?"

"He's revving his engine, pointing at the car and laughing. He's rolling down his window now."

Vince used his master control to roll down his own window. He then leaned around Tempest and looked at the kid next to him. "Yeah?"

"I just wanted to tell you," the guy in the Civic snorted. "Um, nice ride."

"Yeah, you too," Vince laughed.

This angered the young man in the car next to them. "I have a thousand that says I can take you from here to the set of lights four intersections down."

"You're on. Hope you got the cash to pay up." Vince rolled up the window and adjusted his position in his seat.

"You're going to race him through downtown Los Angeles?"

"I sure ain't gonna let him talk smack to me and then beat me in front of you and the whole city."

"Men are such creatures of their egos." She laughed.

"You can't tell me you'd just take his insult and then let him beat you. 'Cause even if you decided not to go with him and just let him take off, he'd still think he beat you."

"I know." She turned her attention to the road. "Watch, it's gonna go green."

"I know that," he growled, getting ready to launch the car.

The light went green and both cars took off. It didn't take very long before the Civic fell away from them. They caught the first two lights they had to pass under while they were green. That wasn't to say they just had a straight line path toward the finish either. It was Friday night and traffic was thick. They had to zigzag in and out of other cars. There were times they had to switch onto the wrong side of the road, and once they almost ended up on the sidewalk. At the third intersection they ran a red light, narrowly missing being hit by a late nineties Ford sedan. In the end they won, as she had been quite sure they would from the moment she saw Vince behind the wheel with his 'game face' on. He took it quite seriously when he was really racing.

They pulled into a parking lot and waited for the kid in the Civic. When he pulled in Vince got out of his car and so did the other guy. Tempest turned the key over far enough to allow her to put her window down so she could try to hear them talking. All she picked up on was the kid asking Vince what he'd done to the Maxima to make it so fast, and Vince refusing to answer with a smirk. He got his money and got back in the car. They took off out of the parking lot and Vince turned the car back toward home.

She figured that was the end of their evening. She turned out to be wrong. He parked the car in front of a local bar. A bar which looked a great deal like a dive. He got out of the car and leaned in the open driver's door to look at her where she was still sitting with her belt done up. "You comin' or are you gonna sit in the car alone all night?"

"I can't go in there dressed like this. Look at that place."

"Aw, come on. I likely know everyone in there so it's not a big deal."

She undid her belt reluctantly and got out of the car. She just knew she was going to end up the center of attention, and it wasn't a position she wanted most of the time. She flung her door closed with a flick of her arm and met Vince at the nose of his car. "You come here often?"

"Yeah, when I go out without Leon and Dom. This ain't really their kinda place."

"You better watch out," she warned.

"What now?"

"Your pickup truck is showing. This place looks like a honky tonk bar."

"I guess it kinda is. But I ain't ever gonna drive no pickup truck."

"Don't knock it until you've tried it."

"You have?" he asked incredulously.

"Lots of my friends have big trucks. We need them to get around in winter."

"I thought you lived in the city."

"I do. But there've been days where I went to bed and there was a dusting of snow, and when I woke up all I could see of my car was the little ball on the end of the antenna. When you have as many dirt roads, farms, fields and breakdowns as we do up home, a truck is something that never fails to come in handy."

"I can't see you behind the wheel of a four by four."

"That's just because you've never seen me in my natural habitat. Lot's of people drive trucks."

"Yeah, but not people who also have Skylines and RX-7's and Altimas."

"I guess not."


	21. Of Romeo and Pretty Women

AN: Ok, here's the next chapter. And if this is going to continue to be the story no one seems to read I'm going to stop posting it here. Posting this story here takes extra time and effort on my part. And I don't mind that time and effort, seriously. But if it's extra effort I'm expending for no good reason because most of the people who seem to be reading the story read it on the other board it's posted on as well, than I might as well just post it there, not have to rewrite it, and email it to the one other person who's not a member of 'A Few Good Men' who likes to read it. Call it my 'artist' having a fit moment. But I don't make money off doing this. I do it to grow as a story teller and to amuse people. So if I can't grow because no one comments and it seems like no one reads it, so no one's enjoying it, it lacks a point to keep posting it here. I'm not a big fan of wasting my time. Did I do something? I get the valid point from the person who said they don't want to review every chapter because they don't always have everything to say. But literally almost no one seems to read the story. I can't help but feel it's either because it's just not interesting to this audience, or because this audience has something against the story's writer. Ok, insecure, bitter tirade over now. On with the story.

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter twenty-one – **On Romeo and Pretty Women**

They walked into the bar and Tempest watched as Vince was greeted by over half the place on sight. She was introduced to everyone who had said hello and shortly there after found herself with a rum and coke in one hand and a pool cue in the other. "I'm no good at pool," she told Vince.

"I'll teach you," he answered and led her over to a table where a man in a Harley Davidson tee shirt stood waiting. Vince greeted the man as Bryce before introducing her to him.

"Tempest?" he asked with a grin.

She took an immediate liking to the new man she had been introduced to as Bryce. She stuck her hand out with a smile. "That's me."

"That your real name?"

"Yep, always has been."

"A unique name for a unique woman," Bryce said, before raising her hand to his mouth and planting a kiss over her knuckles.

"Back off Romeo. She's not for you," Vince said. His tone was jovial, but his friend knew him well enough to pick up on the serious tones under the playful exterior.

"Oh I don't know V," she glanced up at him over her shoulder, a grin on her face. "He might be a model up from what I'm drivin' now."

Bryce laughed at her barb even as Vince grabbed her around the waist and nipped the side of her neck in punishment for what she'd said. Vince looked up at his friend, his chin still pressed against the soft spot between her neck and shoulder. "Rack 'um up. Me'n the novice'll take you on."

"You're on." Bryce began to load the coloured balls into the triangular rack. "You guys break."

"You're up, Trouble."

"I'm no good at this," she warned again.

"Anyone can break. Just hit the cue ball into the rest of the balls as hard as you can."

"You're the boss," she answered and moved to the end of the table. She put the white ball in the appropriate place and bent over, taking aim with her cue. The men stood at the other end of the table waiting for her to break the balls.

"Stop looking down her dress," Vince whispered to his friend out of the corner of his mouth.

"I can't. I can't believe a girl like that is here with you. What's wrong with her?"

"Nothing. Why?"

"'Cause if a girl like that is willing to be seen in public with a guy like you, there must be a catch."

"Yeah, she's Jesse's cousin and she's from Canada. She's only here for two weeks."

"That's the catch. Two weeks between _those_ legs couldn't ever be nearly enough."

Vince growled. "I don't want you lookin' at her legs, let alone thinking of what's between them."

Bryce laughed so hard he had tears running down his cheeks. "You got it some bad Coyote."

"No I don't," Vince protested hotly. "But she ain't the kinda girl you think she is. She don't sleep around, and while she's here she's mine."

"Unless she can get the keys to the next model up."

"She also has a smart ass, sassy mouth and loves to turn it on me. Don't take her seriously. We fought and she's not done makin' me pay for my role in it all yet."

With a crack, the white ball slammed into the coloured balls at the other end of the table and broke into their conversation.

Tempest watched as the balls rolled around on the blue felt top of the table. Two solid balls and one striped one went down. "Ok, so remind me here. Does that mean I can be either high or low?"

"You can always be high or low right after the break. It makes sense to be low, since you got two of those balls, but you can go either way," Vince told her.

"Do I have to call the shots?"

"Yeah, that's part of the rules."

She sighed. "Why'd you have to pick tonight to start playin' by the rules?"

Bryce laughed. "She's got you there man."

"Brotha, she's on my team playing against you. If you really wanna play against us not callin' shots, it's your funeral."

"Calling the shots it is." Bryce watched as Tempest pouted. "Sorry little girl, but I ain't trying to play against the Coyote if he has any extra advantages."

"He's that good at this?"

"He's that good at this," Bryce confirmed.

Tempest went back to studying the table. She knew she was aiming for the solid balls, but she couldn't decide which of the solid balls on the table was her best chance at getting it in the hole. Vince walked up behind her and leaned in close.

"Go for the two ball into the corner pocket," he whispered directly into her ear.

"I can't get the two ball into that pocket. That other ball is in my way," she hissed back.

"Watch," he said, wrapping his arms around her and guiding her into a different position. "Hit the cue ball on this angle, bank it off the side of the table, and it'll hit the two ball hard enough to knock it into the pocket." He called the shot and helped her hit the cue ball. She squealed in delight as the ball went into the hole she wanted it to.

"It worked."

"Of course it worked. Now pick another one," Vince answered, laughing at her exuberance.

"Um, the five?"

"Yeah, we can get the five." Vince called the shot and again wrapped himself around her. "Just about half force," he said softly against her ear. "If you hit it too hard it's gonna hit the edge and it won't go in." Her ass was pressed against his fly because of how he was standing behind her. It was taking all his concentration and willpower not to get an erection in the middle of his favourite bar. Like she knew it, she wiggled around in front of him. He was sure if he asked her why, she'd tell him something about trying to get into a better position to shoot the ball, but he knew better. He helped her cock the cue back and hit the white ball. The five ball went into the pocket.

She laughed again. "We're winning!" They missed the next shot and Bryce moved over to the table.

"Not for long you're not."

Bryce managed to sink three of his balls in a row before he missed one.

"Aw, that's really too bad. You were doin' so well too," Tempest taunted as she sauntered back over to the table. She set her drink down on a shelf mounted on the wall for this purpose and picked up the cue. She was studying the table to try and pick a shot when Vince came up behind her again.

"You still can't pick a shot?"

"I'm just not sure which one I can get."

"_You_ likely can't get any of them. But _we_ can get that one," Vince pointed at one of the remaining solid balls. They shot the ball, got it in the pocket they called and ended up winning the game. They played several more games against Bryce, who eventually ended up with a partner himself.

When she cried off playing pool for awhile, the two friends decided to have a serious game together. Tempest drifted off toward a dart board on the other side of the room. She wasn't really any good at darts either, but since they were there, she figured she could throw a few anyway. She'd been tossing darts for a few moments when a voice interrupted her.

"Sugar, you're doin' that all wrong."

Tempest looked up at the newcomer who'd decided to deride her dart throwing skills. She laughed at him instead of getting mad. "I know. I have no idea what I'm doing here."

"For one, you can't play darts without a drink in your free hand. You need it for balance." He handed her his beer.

"I don't drink beer."

"You don't need to drink it. Just hold the bottle in your hand there." He went and retrieved her darts, handing them back to her. "Now try it again."

She threw one of the darts, beer held around the base in her left hand, dart in her right. She hit the green circle around the bulls-eye. "Well fuck me, it worked."

"Told you. So, what brings someone like you to a place like this?" He looked her over from head to toe. She was dressed to the nines, but talked like any other rough and ready chick they had in the place. She was at odds with his expectations of a girl in 'their' bar.

"Not what. Who. My friend Vince brought me here."

"You're here with Vince?"

"Yeah," Tempest glanced over at her companion before launching another dart. "Why?"

"Didn't know he had a girl."

She shrugged. "We don't chose to label our relationship that way," she grinned.

"Oh, now see the ladies around this place see Vince as one of our most eligible bachelors. They're all trying to catch him. If he brought any of them here personally, they'd want labels."

Tempest smirked, the line from one of her favourite movies slipping out without a pause. "Oh, I'm not trying to catch him. I'm just using him for sex." She figured it was the right answer when he roared with laughter.

He introduced himself as Brett after he had his breathing back under control. They continued on playing darts together. Her game seemed to get better as the night wore on. She couldn't figure if it was because of the tips that Brett gave her, or because her glass was again never allowed to empty. As they played she occasionally glanced over at where Vince was still playing pool—or knowing Vince, likely hustling pool—at the corner table. She was surprised he allowed her to do her own thing, and talk to the other men without a chaperone, but every time she caught him looking at her, the looks that passed between them were almost alive with tension.

By the time two thirty in the morning rolled around, they were still hanging out at the bar. The mostly classic rock being played seemed to appeal to his date, Vince mused as he watched her talk to Bryce and a couple of his other friends. As he watched, Bryce slipped away from the group he was in the middle of and came to stand beside him.

"Take your woman home brotha. If the looks between the two of you get any hotter, you're gonna burn the place down. Take her back here sometime though. She's pretty damn cool."

"Yeah, she is."

Bryce seemed lost in thought for a moment. He was debating the sanity of what he was about to say. "You could do a lot worse, V. In fact, I'm not sure if _you'll_ ever do better."

"Don't you start too!" Vince growled. "I hear it all day long at home. Do I have to hear it from you too?"

"I guess so, 'cause it hasn't sunk in yet."

"Brotha, she's goin' home in a week or so. Gettin' attached to her wouldn't do me a bit of good."

"You said her cousin lives down here, didn't you?"

"Yeah, Jesse lives with us."

"So she might decide to jump ship if she had a reason to."

"So says Jesse. But she wouldn't. We talked about why she won't give in to Jess, who has been after her to move down here for years already. She won't move for him just yet and she wouldn't for me either."

"You asked her too!"

"No, I asked her why, when she obviously loves Jesse like a brother, why she won't give into him and move down here. She could make good enough money to drive or fly home to visit at least once a year, and she's got a tight ride, so she could win at races for some coin too. But she said she's not ready yet."

"Why not?"

"Naw, I'm not gonna go into that with you. That's her business. Just she ain't ready is all you need to know. I ain't sure she's grown enough to move away from her mom and family yet either."

"She sure looks grown enough from here. Don't tell me she's a kid."

Vince shrugged. "She's nineteen. Old enough, I suppose."

It was Bryce's turn to shrug. "Just don't kid yourself too long about just how attached you are already V. Look at how you look at her, how you reacted when she teased about picking me up. What if she lands back down here next year or the year after with a different man on her arm?"

"Than you'll be getting that three am phone call you've been dreading for years. That I need help disposing of the body."

"See!"

"I don't care what she does at home, but down here I won't watch her with another guy."

"But you won't _be_ her guy either."

"I'm hers enough that I brought her here, that she's goin' home with me tonight. Neither of us want it more defined than that."

"Alright already. I get it. You're one stubborn hombre." Bryce moved to walk away. "Shit, here, before I forget." He handed Vince an envelope. "From Stephen. Job for next week I think. You'n me, if it is."

"Cool. I'll call you next week."

With a wave, Bryce walked away and Vince walked into the middle of the crowd of other guys to retrieve his girl. "You ready to head for home, Trouble?"

"Yeah," she yawned behind her hand. "I am."

"Ok, let's go then," he said, fishing his car keys out of his pocket.

"Nice to meet you all," she told the group at large with a smile and a wave, as Vince led her toward the door.

A chorus of 'you too's and 'good nights' replied to her farewell.

Once she was in the passenger seat of the Maxima, reclined back in her chair, she yawned again. "I like your friends."

"They like you too. Even if you are just using me for sex," he laughed.

"Seemed like the right thing to say at the time," she answered, slightly embarrassed her quip had made it back to him.

"Given what Brett then had to say about you, it was totally the right thing to say. They all think you're the coolest girl since Angelina Jolie."

"I'm sure that's slightly exaggerated."

"Nope," he answered. When she didn't have a comeback to make, Vince turned the radio on and tuned in a classic rock station. As the relaxing sounds of Kansas started to drift around them, he was surprised to hear her start to sing along.

"_Carry on my wayward son. There'll be peace when you are done. Lay your weary head to rest. Don't you cry no more_."

He liked the sound of her. He would have liked to have his guitar so he could play for her and just let her sing to his music. When the song ended, he glanced over at her. "You have a nice voice."

"I'm ok, I guess. I used to sing in a choir when I was a kid and I had to audition to get in, so I musta been ok."

"You're good. You should take up the guitar or piano too."

"I'll think about it."


	22. Of Surprises and Borrowing Trouble

Thanks for letting me know people still read the story. It doesn't get a lot of hits compared to my other stories, and those haven't been updated in 'a coon's age' so I just assumed it wasn't being read here. Since it is read at the other place it's posted, I just figured I'd save some time and not post it where it wasn't being well received. But now that I'm more aware that it is being read, I'll post it gladly here. This chapter was originally NC-17. It's pretty toned down, but likely still pushes the limits of M. So, you're warned. Don't whine to me about it being to racy for your tastes because all you'll get is a big round of Brie to go with your whine for your trouble G

Just because I don't want to update the story with a note why it's taking so long, here's a brief update on Catalyst. Yes, I do plan to finish it and yes I do know it hasn't been updated in a very long time. I did start on the final chapter for it and have a few pages down. Here's the rub though. Catalyst is this huge, shiny, impossibly perfect—considering I wrote it—story in my mind. The characters are real and normal, the spelling and grammar are good—considering I wrote it—and I really, really want the last chapter to be perfect. So now I have all these grand expectations and I want the perfect ending I imagined. And now I doubt my ability to end my own story to my own standards and give it the ending it deserves. So I've been half afraid to write it. I haven't wanted to force it because I've been feeling if I do, it won't come out perfect. Sooner or later I'll start writing it and settle for done and it'll turn out better than I thought it would, like all my chapters for it seemed to. But for now it feels like I've written myself into a corner and can't get out. Hope that makes sense, and I promise it will be finished someday.

With love, T

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter twenty-two – **Of Surprises and Borrowing Trouble**

Vince parked the car in the driveway, and was glad to see all the lights were off. "We'll go in the back door. Closer to the stairs."

"Good idea. You got a key for the back door?"

"Yeah, I do live here."

"Smart ass."

He chuckled. He got the door unlocked and turned back to face her. He just found himself standing, looking down into her eyes on the back step. She broke the silence first.

"I had a nice time tonight. I'm glad I didn't beat Dominic." She smiled softly, choosing to say 'didn't' rather than 'couldn't'.

"Me too," he answered. Before he knew what he was doing, his hand was cupping her cheek and his lips were brushing over hers lightly. He was waiting for her to push him away, to tell him she wasn't interested in picking this part of what was between them back up. So he was quite glad when rather than do as he expected, her hands slid up over his chest and didn't stop there, but instead carried on to twine around his neck as she kissed him back.

Some part of her had planned to tell him they were likely better off just keeping the period at the end of their sexual relationship. And then he put his hands on her and there wasn't a thing she could think of but the feeling of his skin against hers. She swayed into him, leaning on his chest as she both allowed him to kiss her deeply and responded in kind. She sighed against his lips as one of his hands moved into her hair to hold the back of her head and the other moved around her waist, holding her close to his body heat.

After another moment, his hand left her hair and his lips moved down across her neck. He reached behind himself and fumbled for the doorknob. He was glad he'd unlocked the door before he'd turned back to kiss her. He wasn't ready to let her go, not even long enough to open the door. So in that spirit, when he pushed the door inward, he didn't turn around to walk through it, but rather stepped up and backwards into the house, pulling her with him. He moved them deep enough into the kitchen to get the door closed and locked before backing her up against it, still licking and nipping the side of her neck as her hands knotted in his hair.

She used the grip she had on his hair to drag his mouth back to hers. Once that was accomplished her hands released their hold and drifted downward before sliding around behind him and drifting up over his back, under his shirt. He leaned closer to her, lining his body up with hers, trapping her between the heat of his bulk and the cold of the wooden door. "Take me to bed, V." She shocked herself with her request uttered out loud.

"Can't wait that long," he growled against her neck as he reached between them.

She heard the zipper of his pants going down. She gasped in shock. "What're you sayin'?"

"That I can't wait 'til I can get you down the stairs to have you." He started to work her dress up over her hips.

"We're gonna," she trailed off, her voice breathless. She figured he could fill in the blank without her help. "Right here in the kitchen?"

"I'll never be able to look at this door the same way again," he confirmed in a low voice tinged with laughter.

She felt her knees get weak when the facts he was both dead serious _and_ had her dress pretty much out of his way already clicked. She reached for him. If they were going to do what they were going to do, she figured she might as well go all out.

It suddenly occurred to him that important elements of her clothes were missing. "You weren't wearing anything under this scrap of dress all night?"

"Surprise," she said on a breathless laugh.

He groaned against her mouth, wondering what he'd done to deserve such an intriguing package of trouble. It was dark in the kitchen, but enough light spilled in from outside to highlight her leaning against the door. Her skin was pale and looked luminous in the ambient light from outside. The effect was intensified by the inky black of her dress rucked up around her hips. "I can't get enough of you."

"No kiddin'." Her hands returned to the slick skin of his back, sliding under his tight black shirt to trail up and down his spine.

"I don't know how I waited this long to get you home. I haven't had anything else in my mind ever since you kept rubbin' your ass back on me in the pool hall."

She laughed throatily. "Why do you think I did that in the first place?"

He growled softly before tangling his hands in her hair and kissing her again. Their mouths met in a clash of teeth and tongues, their mutual desire coming together like two flame fronts, burning hot and violent.

After, she giggled tiredly in his arms. "Ok, that wasn't what I had in mind, but sure was interesting."

He caught her with a chuckle before wiggling her dress back down over her lower body. "I never figured on anyone but Dom and Letty 'christening' the kitchen."

"Really? Where? Not against the door I hope."

"No. On the counter beside the sink."

"Gross," she said, but laughed as she said it.

"Well, they cleaned up behind themselves."

"That's still nasty."

"Well, sometimes even the amount of time just to tackle a flight of stairs is too long."

"I hear that." This side of Vince was the one that was going to make it the hardest to let him go in a week, she mused to herself as she stood in his arms, leaning into his strength and joking with him. The almost tender, playful lover was the part of him she loved the most. The badass who would have a verbal sparring match with her any time, any place came in a close second. _Oh my god, did I just say love, even in my own head? Oh man,_ she groaned in her own thoughts. _I'm in a lot of trouble_.

"And unless you want to try out the kitchen table, it's time to go to bed." He swung her up into his arms. When she giggled breathlessly at him after he had his arms hooked around her back and under her knees he kissed her again. "I've got about thirty seconds before that table's gonna look too good to pass up."

"Just get your shirt. I don't wanna know what'll happen if Dom finds that hanging over the dish rack in the morning."

He had to fight a fit of laughter loud enough to wake everyone in the neighbourhood. He was half tempted to leave his shirt hanging there, just to see what Dom would say. But in the end common sense won out and he snagged it before starting down the basement stairs.

_I really can't believe it! _Poor Mia stood frozen in shock in the living room. She had woken up a while before, and unable to go back to sleep, had decided to head down to the kitchen for a glass of warm milk. The strange noises she had heard had given her pause. Thinking there might be a prowler in the house, she had first turned to go wake Dom. But then she had admonished herself to stop being foolish, and decided to check on her own. She had tried to talk herself into believing she was hearing things, or that someone had left the window over the sink open and there were ambient sounds from outside making their way in. If only that had been the case!

Instead she had come down the hall, creeping like she expected someone to jump out and get her at any minute, only to find herself confronted by Vince's bare back across the room. When she realized he wasn't standing still, but moving his hips, she'd figured out what he was doing, standing shirtless in front of the door. And with whom. At first her shock had stood her frozen in her place, a hand covering her mouth in horror. They were having sex. In her kitchen. Standing against the back door. And judging by the way Tempest had her head thrown back, and Vince had his open mouth pressed to the column of her throat, they were really enjoying themselves too. They were so wrapped up in each other they didn't even know she was there.

That thought had her moving again in a hurry. She didn't want them to know she was there either, didn't want to get caught watching. Not that there was a lot to see, due to the way they were standing. _Thank god_, she thought, kissing her thumb in thanksgiving. The idea what was going on was enough to live with. She didn't want to see any more than she already had! Heck, she hadn't wanted to even see that much! But it still boggled her mind. Vince, of all people, had Jesse's analytical, methodical cousin so tangled up she was willing to throw caution to the wind and allow him to back her up against a door in one of the main rooms of a house that six people lived in and have sex with her.

_He took his shirt off to have sex in my kitchen and it landed on my _dish rack! _And they thought about leaving it there for_ Dom _to find_. Mia couldn't prevent the snort of laughter that escaped her. The humour of in the idea of Dominic finding clothes in his kitchen wasn't hard to see. But, funny or no, now she still had to live with the knowledge of seeing it happen, knowing it happened, and acting like she hadn't seen, and didn't know, anything. And now, add to all that she now knew her brother and best friend had had sex on her kitchen counter, beside the sink. And that her brother's friend and his other friend's cousin had momentarily considered having sex on her kitchen table. _What's the world coming to?_

When she was sure they were locked safely in Vince's room, she moved into the kitchen and put some milk in a pot on the stove. She then filled the sink with hot water and cleanser and wiped down the door. She knew she'd never get back to sleep if she didn't do in now, when it would be dry and the evidence she knew what they'd done gone by morning. Like an afterthought she scrubbed the counter down too, even though she knew she'd washed in literally thousands of times since 'the event'. By the time she was done her milk was warm and she poured it into a mug, carrying it back upstairs with her. She chuckled once she was back in her bed. She figured she could either see the humour or go crazy. Maybe it would be good for Vince to get a taste of reality in the form of a real relationship, even if it was only for two weeks. It could only be giving him unrealistic expectations to date girls who didn't expect anything of him time after time.


	23. Of Closed Doors and Shattered Glass

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Twenty-Three – **Of Closed Doors and Shattered Glass**

Much to her surprise, Tempest woke up early the next day. She was awake by ten. That might not have counted as early in everyone's book, but it sure did in hers. Especially when something, or rather someone, had kept her up until four in the morning the night before. She spent five minutes trying to go back to sleep before she gave up. She was up for good.

She was sure there was an evil glint in her eyes when she looked over at Vince, where he was still snoring on his back, oblivious to the fact that the day had started around him. Carefully, she slid out of his arms and out of his bed before she got dressed in a pair of cotton shorts and a tank top. She then carefully crept over to the side of the bed where Vince was. With a leap she landed on him with a laugh, straddling his stomach with her hands on his shoulders.

He opened his eyes into surly slits and looked up at her. She knew there was a goofy grin on her face. She couldn't help it. The fact she was waking him up hours earlier than he'd appreciate, and doing so while she was in a fantastic mood, made her grin. The way the sheets rode down low on his hips and left his spectacular chest and arms bare didn't hurt either. Therefore, it was mostly his fault she was in such a good mood and she figured that it was actually his own fault he was getting woken up, based on that logic. _He's gonna be _so_ pissed_, she mused, still smiling like a loon. "'Mornin'!" she chirped.

"What time is it?" he groaned.

"Just after ten. It's so nice out! I can see the sun sorta creeping around the curtains. I wanna go enjoy the day."

"I'll enjoy the day, no problem. I'll start enjoying it in about three hours, when I get up," he snarled. "It's too fuckin' early to be awake."

"Aw, you're not fun." Even his bad attitude couldn't wipe the smile off her face. She stood up off him after smacking a wet, noisy kiss against his lips and started toward the door.

"Where are you goin'?"

"I'ma go wake Jesse up and make him take me someplace. I'm up, I'm far away from home, and I don't want to spend a beautiful Saturday lying around the house."

"Have a good time," he grumbled, rolling over and pulling his blankets over his head.

"Oh, I'm sure I will. Ta ta," she called over her shoulder as she left the room, closing the door behind her. She went into Jesse's room and found him sleeping as well, curled up on his side. She threw herself back on his bed and bounced a few times before coming to rest on her back against his pillows. She knew he was awake, and pretending he wasn't in the hope she'd just go away. She sighed heavily instead.

"What do you want," he whined, when it became obvious she wasn't going anywhere.

"What every girl wants when she's in SoCal on a beautiful Saturday morning. I wanna go to the beach, or for a drive, or somethin'. I wanna get outta the house and enjoy the day."

Jesse looked at his clock. "Jesus Temp, it's only ten fifteen in the morning."

"I know! We can get to the beach before the crowd hits."

"Alright already. I'll get up and get ready. Can we eat someplace before?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Why don't you go ask Leon if he wants to come too?"

"I can't just walk into Leon's room unannounced, J."

"I can pretty much guarantee he won't mind."

"I don't know about that, and I think that Vince likely would mind."

"So?" Jesse asked, grinning.

"Good point," she said, smirking with her answer. "I'll go ask Leon if he wants to come too."

"I'll get dressed," Jesse answered. He watched her walk out of his room.

A moment later he heard Leon's startled yell and he laughed out loud.

Tempest crept into Leon's room, opening the door slowly and tip toeing into the cavernous darkness of Leon's domain. She left the door open a crack, needing the sliver of light not to trip over the debris on Leon's floor. She found he slept on his back in a sprawl which took up his whole bed. No flopping beside him with enough force to bounce him then, there was no place for her to land. There was no way she was throwing the blankets off him. She was willing to bet he didn't have much on under there, if anything.

With a chuckle she threw caution to the wind and jumped on his stomach, much as she had Vince. He came to abruptly with a startled yell.

"Mornin'," she greeted him happily.

"What time is it?" he moaned.

"Ten twenty."

"Why are you awake, and in my room, at ten twenty? And so damn _happy_ about it," he groaned.

"Jess and I are going out for breakfast and then to hang out at the beach, or somethin'. You wanna come too?"

"It's so early," he whined.

She started to tickle his sides through his sheets. "But you're up now anyways. Are you gonna go back to sleep?"

He couldn't stop himself from laughing frantically and trying to toss her off. She hung on like a fat kid on a cupcake, and in the end he surrendered. "Ok, I'll get up and come. Shit! You always been this devious?"

"Unhuh. I don't like to not get my own way."

"No kiddin'. Why isn't Vince in on this little boot camp trip out to breakfast?"

"He wouldn't get up so I left him in bed. He can fend for his own breakfast later."

"Lucky bastard."

"You can go back to sleep, you know? Jess and I can go without you."

"How'm I supposed to go back to sleep after a human wrecking ball jumped on my gut for twenty minutes to wake me up?"

"It was hardly twenty minutes, and V seemed to manage."

"Vince could sleep through a hurricane, earthquake and world war three, even if they all happened at once."

"That's too bad for him. He doesn't get breakfast. Let's go already," it was her turn to whine.

"Well gorgeous, as good as you look sittin' there, if you wanna leave the house, you gotta get off me so I can get up and get dressed."

"You think I look good?" She arranged her hair around her shoulders with a playful smile.

"Pretty much any girl under thirty would look good sittin' there. Well, maybe just a little bit lower." He smirked with his statement, wagging his eyebrows in suggestion.

"You're a perv," she laughed.

"Naw, I'm just a guy. And you're a girl and we're in my bed. It's only natural. You're just lucky that you're Jesse's cousin or you might be in trouble."

"I think, given my sleeping arrangements for the last few nights, you'd be in some trouble too. He don't really seem like the type to share."

Leon flushed slightly. He wasn't about to tell her that he and Vince's willingness to share simply depended on the situation and the girl. She was right enough about Vince's willingness to share her, he figured. "I would rather keep my person in one piece. I guess that much is true."

"You gonna get up already? I don't wanna wait around all day."

"If you let me get up, I'll be ready in about five minutes."

"Ok, but if you're not ready to roll and in the living room in five I'ma come lookin' for you and you're leaving with us no matter how dressed, or undressed you are. Got it?"

He chuckled. "Yeah, I hear you. But I might be startin' to think you just like seein' me without my clothes on."

"A girl always likes to see nice lookin' guys without their clothes on Leo. It's just that you're practically a brother to Jess, and that makes you kinda like a relation to me. But then again, it'd only be distant, so I don't know if that'd necessarily save you."

"Get outta here and let me get dressed Temp, or we ain't never leaving."

She leaned down, put a hand over his mouth and kissed the back of her hand with a smack. "Ok already. Just remember, five minutes." She climbed off the bed and left the room, closing the door behind her. She found Jesse leaving the bathroom.

"He comin' too?"

"Yeah, he's got five minutes to get ready. I just gotta run and change into my bathing suit while he's doin' that."

"You gonna try and get the grouch up one last time while you're in there?"

"Naw, let him sleep. Who wants to listen to him piss and moan all morning?"

"Good point."

Tempest pushed into the dim light of Vince's room quietly and crept over to her duffle. She glanced at the bed, and found Vince facing the other way on his side. She quickly shed her clothes and pulled her bottoms on before pulling her shorts back on. She was reaching around behind herself to tie the back of her suit when she glanced over her shoulder and found him watching her. "I'll be gone in a second, go back to sleep."

"Sleep's not what I got in mind anymore."

His voice was low and gruff, his morning voice mixed with something more. She shook her head from side to side with her nose wrinkled, pretending she didn't know what he meant. "How so?"

"Come 'ere. I got somethin' to show you."

"I don't have time for show and tell right now. I've got other plans."

"Oh, there won't be much tell involved, and it won't take long to show you what I got for you."

"Now see, if you'd just thought of that before I woke up Jess and Leon, you likely coulda sold me on the idea. But now I got plans. I'll see you later. We'll likely be home for supper."

"Where are you goin'?"

"Breakfast, and then the beach."

"Breakfast?"

"And the beach."

He sighed. "The beach, huh?"

"Yeah."

"When is all this fun occurring?"

She glanced at the clock. "In about three minutes. As long as Leon gets ready as fast as he said he did."

"Fine," he sighed. "I guess since I gotta eat anyway, I might as well come too."

"Not if I'll have to hear you whine about hating the beach all day. If that's gonna go down, you're not invited."

"I guess if you don't kill everything blonde in a bikini within a ten mile radius it won't be so bad."

"Oh I won't. But if that's the case, and I wanna stare at the surfer dudes, you got no call to get uppity."

"You can stare all you want." He rolled out of bed and stalked her way. "But if you do anything more than look, you better be sure you don't like the guy you're doin' it with all that much."

"As if any woman could handle more than one guy in her life if one of 'em was you. It's like havin' three kids _and_ a dog to take care of. Three kids, all the same age at the same time."

"And listenin' to you is like havin' ten angry, jealous girlfriends in your face at once."

"Than I guess we're even. And as if you'd know what it's like to have a girlfriend!"

"Way to low blow there, T."

"What? You're the one who told me you'd only really had the one, back in high school. How's that my bad?"

"It's not. Never mind," he growled. He wasn't going to tell her how it had seemed like she was throwing his inability to get Mia to date him in his face. The last thing he wanted was another discussion about Mia and his chances in that regard. Hearing her shoot them down once had been quite enough. More than enough. He stalked over to his dresser and threw the drawer open violently.

"Oh, for fuck's sake! Are you gonna mope and whine all day now 'cause I said somethin' that made you think about somethin' that pissed you off?"

"Maybe."

"Ok, stay home and be petulant. You don't need to come with us and drag everyone down with you. Sometimes you can be such an over sensitive baby."

"How would you know? You barely know me."

"I know enough," she said, her growl a close imitation of his. After everything, how dare he imply she didn't know him? She knew him intimately, wasn't that enough? More than enough? "I know," she started. And then she stopped. No where she could take this discussion wouldn't turn into a huge fight. She gave up with a sigh. "Listen. I'm still in a good mood right now but if I stand here and fight with you about whatever it is I said to cause something to crawl up your ass and die there I'll just end up in a pissy mood like you. So I'ma let it drop right now and leave with my cousin and his friend. I suggest you stay home if you won't end up being happy to be out with us. Understand?"

"Go where ever the fuck you want. I don't wanna go with you anyway."

"Good!" she roared, finally losing some of her good humour. "As if we really wanted to listen to you bitch and whine all day about everything under the sun in the first place." She pulled her tank top back on almost violently and slapped a pair of sunglasses onto her face before pushing them up into her hair. "Try not to martyr yourself while we're out!" She turned to the door. Before she could get it open and escape through it, he had a hold of her arm.

"What do you mean by that?" he growled, low and dangerously.

_You got him real mad now._ The thought gave her some sort of perverse pleasure. "I mean, since you seem to take yourself so seriously, and me telling you I don't seems to piss you off so much, try not to pretend that I actually did something to you to set this off in the first place. Try, for once, to put the blame on your own shoulders where it belongs."

"What would you know about it?"

"I know I simply said something that happens to be a fact, a fact you provided me with at that, and then you acted like I was the world's biggest bitch for talking about something you told me about. My god, why do you think everyone should have to ok every topic they ever think about talking about with you first, just to make sure it's not gonna piss you off?"

"I don't think that. I just think it was low, what you said."

"Why? Because now you're pretending that it isn't your fault you've never had any serious girlfriends? Because now you're acting like the women of the world just won't have you, no matter how you try? Because the way I see it, instead of trying to meet nice girls and have a real relationship, you've been content to have sex with everything that won't expect more than that, and glad when you were right about their expectations. So forgive me if I don't get why that subject is off limits, and don't think talking about it shoulda really pissed you off this bad."

"You know what? Fuck you. You're right, you don't understand why that subject should be off limits. What would you know about wanting something you'll never have?"

"Gee, what would I know about that?" She smiled derisively, unable to believe that he had such a skewed view of his situation. He honestly thought he was the only one who had ever been in the situation of having unrequited feelings for someone else?

"I dunno. What would you?" he asked sarcastically.

_Guess he really does feel that way. Wonder what he'd say if I told him that I want him the way he wants Mia? Might not be true, but might be worth it for the shock value. Or not. He'd blow the fuck up then, for real. _"More than I'm willin' to tell you. You know Vince, you can't always get what you want. More often than not, you will get what you really need. But only if you open yourself up to the possibility."

"Like I care what someone who's never been there thinks about it."

"Oh my fuckin' god! Have you heard a word I said?" She answered her own question. "No, of course you haven't, because I'm sayin' things you don't wanna hear. Ok, home truth time," she started. She had finally figured out this was about Mia, in some way, and she was so angry she didn't even care at the moment if she was giving him ammo against her in the long run. He could be as fucked up angry as he wanted to be about her playful quip about girlfriends, but how did he think it was ok for him to keep on sleeping with her night after night, and keep on throwing the fact it was Mia he really wanted in her face? As mad as he was, she had to bet she was more so, and he was about to find that out. The hard way. It was fine for him to want her for one thing and wish he could have Mia in the end. It was not ok for him to continually make no secret of the fact he would drop her like a hot potato if his best friend's sister just gave him the time of day.

"There was a guy once that I really liked. I mean, really liked. Liked so much that if he had said to me 'let's go get married and have babies' I woulda fell over myself to do it. And I was only like seventeen at the time. I was head over heels. Mooned around after him every chance I had. Wrote his name on my notes, my books, my skin. I wanted him so bad that I couldn't tell you if he called me up tomorrow and asked me to meet him someplace I wouldn't run outta here as fast as my legs would take me. But me'n this guy had been friends for a long time. And the sad fact was he didn't see me in any capacity other than as a friend. And he never would have either. Because he didn't want me that way! Shit, did it suck? Yeah, it sucked hardcore. I mean, when I finally accepted it I," she shook her head. There were limits to how much truth she was willing to tell. "I didn't take it well," she amended. "But I did accept his feelings on the subject, even if he never did come right out and tell me what they were, and I moved on. I did not live my life in some fantasy world where he suddenly changed his mind one day. So you can't even play the whole 'oh poor me, no one gets it' card with me. Shit won't fly."

"You were just a kid! It's totally different. You didn't go through the shit we did!"

She fisted her hands in her hair in frustration. Her grip on her ability not to rush him and start whaling on him was hanging by a tenuous thread. "In the end it's all the same thing. She might love you V, but she'll never be in love with you, and if you keep tryin' to force her hand, she's just gonna figure she needs to be far, far away from you and then she ain't even gonna be your friend. And you not wantin' to hear that doesn't make it any less true." Again, she just wanted to cut him verbally and watch him bleed. She wanted him to hurt the way she hurt. Slash at him with the only weapon she had in her arsenal, her ability with words. When she saw the anger on his face intensify, and be joined by something more, she had to bet she'd succeeded. She was happy about that, but not happy enough to stop being white hot angry. "So now you can sulk in here alone because I'm goin' out with my friends. I sure ain't hangin' around to have some other woman thrown in my face any more today. See ya around."

"You ain't goin' anywhere until we finish this!" he growled, taking hold of her wrist.

"We _are_ finished. I ain't never gonna see it your way, and you are never gonna believe me when I tell you I do understand what it's like but that you ultimately need to decide on your own to get a life. We have nothing else to talk about. We're _done_." She twisted her arm free of his grip.

He looked at his empty hand in shock. _How the hell did she do that?_ He shook his head. It didn't matter. "Don't you dare walk away from me."

She pulled the door open. "See you around, V," she said softly and walked out of the room, closing the door behind her. She forced a fake cheerfulness to her tone and face. She couldn't stop herself from jumping a little in fright when something shattered off the back of his door, but her fake happy look stayed firmly in place. "Ok guys, let's get outta here." She was still wound so tight it didn't occur to her that, due to the thinness of the walls, her friends had likely heard every word said in anger, as well as the shattering glass.


	24. Of Romantic Languages and Honeyed Words

AN: I'm updating again now because…Well, because I want to. And because I'm not feeling well, and perhaps the comments I get will make me feel better. (Yes, that was a not so thinly veiled hint :D) Villana, I'm glad the whole 'out of control' aspect of what they're doing comes across. I'm not sure she loves him exactly, but she certainly does have stronger feelings for him than he does for her. Or at least, it seems that way, doesn't it:D Now, dear readers, of course they can't figure things out too soon or there would stop being a wild ride of a story to write, wouldn't there. You gotta remember that this is two years before the movie, so both of them are fairly young. And both of them are the most stubborn person most of their friends know so that's gonna cause problems. And neither of them is a 'mushy' sort of person, and that means they don't deal with their feelings all that well. Anyway, keep reading and I'll keep writing you guys. Ya'll rock! Always, T. And messed up my upload again and I'm not fighting with the formatting for the next hour, so the spacing is very odd. Sorry.

**The Funeral of a Good Girl **

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Twenty Four – **Of Romantic Languages and Honeyed Words **

"Vince not comin'?" Leon asked. He decided that in this case it would obviously be best to pretend he hadn't heard a thing, right along with her.

"Naw. He's not feelin' good," she lied.

"He's just too lazy to get up this early," Jesse grumbled, catching onto the same thing as Leon had, that it was a subject better left alone.

"That too," Tempest agreed, still with a smile pinned to her face. "I'm hungry! Let's go."

"You got no arguments here," Leon said, grinning. "I could eat a horse."

"Maybe you could stick to a pig, seeing as how that's where bacon and ham and sausage come from."

"Ok Gorgeous, I could eat a pig."

"Ok, let's go find somewhere that'll grill you one up."

"I know where we gotta go," Jesse spoke up and named his favourite grease ball diner.

"Yeah, true that!" Leon responded. "They have the best pancakes there."

"Pancakes?" Tempest asked, as her interest in this establishment rose.

"Yeah, pancakes. The best fuckin' pancakes you ever had. Ever."

"Why are we still standing in the house then? Let's get a move on," she shoved Leon and Jesse toward the stairs.

"Well, someone musta done somethin' to work up one hell of an appetite last night," Leon teased.

"Shut up," Tempest and Jesse retorted at the same time.

"Sides, don't hate on me 'cause I got lucky and you didn't," Tempest said as she wrapped an arm around Leon's neck.

"Who says I didn't?"

"Ok, well, I guess you might have. But if you did, it looks like she went home early. So unless you kept her up for two hours, you didn't get as lucky as I did."

"T, that totally counts as an over share."

"Yeah cuz, I didn't need the info, or the mental picture."

"I'm not the one who brought up the source of my appetite."

"Just shut up and get outta this house," Leon said, breaking her hold on his neck and shoving her toward the stairs.

She tripped over the first one, landing on her knee and palms. "Jesus H. Christ!" she roared. "That fuckin' hurt." She rubbed her wrist.

"Shit! I'm sorry!" Leon rushed over to where she had sat down on the stairs. "I didn't think you'd trip."

"I didn't think I'd trip either, or I wouldn't have," she teased. She didn't want Leon to feel bad about things, or think it was his fault she'd fallen.

"You ok?" He took hold of the arm she was rubbing and felt around her wrist. "Does that hurt?"

"A little. I'm fine, I swear."

He twisted her wrist another way. "What about that?"

"A little bit." She rolled her eyes. "I'm really ok Leon. We'll just take someone else's car so I can give the arm a break and I'll be fine by supper, ok? Shit, it isn't like I never hurt myself before. You see these scarred up knuckles?"

"I don't care what you do to yourself Gorgeous, but I tripped you this time."

"No, you pushed me and then I tripped over my own feet. I'm klutzy to begin with."

"No you ain't," Jesse broke in.

Tempest glared back at him. "Yes, I am," she said, careful to accent yes, hoping Jesse would take the hint.

"No you're not."

"Jesse! I should be deaf from all the inner ear shit I went through as a kid. My balance ain't the best. I'm lucky I can hear."

"If you're that sure you're gonna live, let's get a move on!" Leon helped her up off her seat on the stairs. "I don't wanna miss breakfast!" He really didn't want to stick around long enough for Vince to get his temper under control enough to leave his room, take one look at 'Trouble' and lose it again, either.

"Alright already. You'd think you didn't just almost cripple me on the stairs."

"You said you was ok."

"And I am, but damn! Don't push me again. What part of my klutzy nature didn't you pick up the first time you almost pushed me up the stairs?" She started up the stairs. "Whose ride are we takin'?"

"Well, I wouldn't be caught dead in the Jetta, so your options are Skyline or Skyline."

"Hey!" Jesse said. "There's nothing wrong with the Jetta." He was quick to defend his car's honour.

"Other than the whole couldn't get out of its own way thing it's got goin' on," Tempest teased as she pushed out the back door. "But we can take my car, if one of you wants to drive."

"I'll do it!" Jesse volunteered. "I'll drive it."

"Ok, ok, you can drive. Don't wet yourself already," she laughed, tossing him the keys.

He caught them and rushed the older of the two Skylines, opening the driver's door and sliding onto the driver's seat. Leon got in the back and Tempest took shotgun. Once they were under way Tempest turned the radio on. The CD player kicked in with 'Black Dog' by Led Zeppelin.

"No shit. You like Zeppelin?" Leon asked.

"Yeah. I like all kinds of music. Pretty much all I don't do is classical. And opera."

"Ok, I take back what I said about you being safe from my advances. Marry me," Leon teased. "You drive the perfect car, have the perfect taste in music. I think you're the woman for me. How 'bout it, Gorgeous? Vegas ain't that far a drive."

"Aw, maybe next year Leo. I think Dom'd be pissy we missed races on the same day that he got me as a permanent fixture in his life."

"Sure would about sum up as the worst day of his year," Jesse agreed with a laugh. "You can't take Dom not liking you too personal. Dom rarely likes anyone."

"Oh, on the contrary. I'm not taking it personal, unless you count all the personal pleasure I'm taking in enforcing his opinion of me." She grinned slyly. "Pushing him to new heights of anger amuses me to no end."

"I'm glad you're only here two weeks then. If you were around longer one of you would end up dead. And by times I have a hard time thinking I'd be able to bet on Dom being the one still left standing when the smoke cleared." Leon grinned.

"I guess it would depend on long or short range combat. I would be willing to bet I'd win long range, but he could likely take me in hand to hand." She smirked.

"I don't know what we'd have done without Dom," Jesse mused, turning serious. "We had no where else to go."

"How'd you two meet up, anyway?" Tempest asked, finally letting her curiosity get the better of her.

"I was gassing up the Jetta at a Chevron in New Mexico on the night I decided to run away from home, and Leon was gassing up the Skyline at the same one. We started to talk cars, and talked for hours off to the side of the parking lot. It turned out we both had no where to go, and didn't want to find a place anywhere near Santa Fe either. So we decided to take off together for Los Angeles. We both figured that there would be lots of opportunities for us here. We met Dom at races shortly after we got into town, and the rest is history."

"He's kinda like a Chihuahua puppy," Leon started with a smirk. "Cute but otherwise useless and helpless. Great for attracting chicks and not much else."

"Except for tunin' that fussy car of yours to the point where you beat Dom your first race out and secured us a place to live."

"Ok, except for pickin' up chicks and tuning engines. Otherwise, you're useful as a bag a'hammers, and not half as smart."

"Shut up," Jesse said, but laughed as he said it.

"It almost makes me jealous!" Tempest admitted. "We use to be close like that, and we still mostly are, but not like we use to be."

"We use to be six, T. 'Sides, all you have to do to fix it is move down here. Be just you'n me again."

"Hey!"

"And Leon, of course," Jesse conceded.

"Of course," Tempest added with a smile. "But you'd have to worry. Leon's interest isn't totally plutonic. He told me so this morning."

"Hey! My exact words were if you weren't Jesse's cousin, you'd be in trouble showin' up in my room alone and jumping on top of me."

"Is that why you screamed?" Jesse asked.

"Yeah, she landed right on my gut from being fully airborne. And I didn't scream, I roared. Like a man."

"But, then you asked me to marry you 'cause I like Zeppelin, 'member?"

"But you turned me down. 'Bout broke my heart."

"The same way it'd break mine when my husband of two days got his neck snapped by his former best friend?"

"Just like that, yeah." Leon grinned. "We could always run away, back to Canada. He'd never find us."

"You'd have to give up the Skyline over me Leo. She's too new to be legal in Canada."

"Ok, deal's off. Sorry Gorgeous, I've known my car longer than you."

"I can do things for you that a Skyline can't," she said, turning in her seat to face Leon and cocking a brow his way.

"What part of you're like a sister to me is so hard for you, and you," Jesse said, turning to Leon after he'd addressed Tempest, "to understand? Damn, I don't want to think of you and any guy in that way. You're still six in my mind. Well, a six year old who can drink and go to raves with me, but in a guy/girl way, you're too young for those kinds of activities."

"I guess you got right lucky that it's my room that shares a wall with the Coyote then," Leon smirked.

Jesse groaned as Tempest fought a blush and didn't quite win. "Yeah, well I had to listen to both of you doin' those things on Wednesday night, so we're even."

"You were asleep!" Leon sputtered.

"Not right away I wasn't. And I woke up several times to go be sick. And not just because I had too much to drink, I might add. It's unnerving to hear someone you know makin' those noises."

"Tell me about it," Leon fervently agreed.

"Well, that's one worry you won't have on this front anymore," she reminded. "C'est fini."

"What does that mean?" Jesse asked.

"It's finished, in French."

"You know French?" Leon asked. "I retract my retraction. Marry me. And then talk French to me."

"I don't speak French. Well, not really. I learned it all through school, but not enough, or well enough to have conversations. I just know the odd phrase."

"I see. But you could pretty much shit me, and just string together all the French words you know and I'd never know you weren't talkin' French to me. Not like I know a word of it."

"J'aim la anana."

"What did you say?"

"I think I said I love the pineapple, but I could be wrong."

Jesse and Leon burst out laughing as they pulled up to the diner. They got a booth and sat down. Tempest slid into one side, assuming Jesse would either slide in with her, or share with Leon on the other side. She was surprised when Leon slid in beside her and left Jesse to hold down the other side on his own. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "So, any further thought given on the commute to Vegas yet, Gorgeous?"

"I thought you decided your car was more important to you than a young marriage to me, and I decided I liked you better alive than beaten to a pulp."

"Then I found out you could talk foreign languages and I started to rethink my position."

"Desidero versare il miele sul vostro corpo e leccarlo fuori," she crooned breathlessly, looking up at Leon and forcing a look of besottedness to her face.

"Do I want to know what you just said? And that sure didn't sound like French."

"It was Italian, and no, you don't want to know what I said. At the very least, Jesse really doesn't want to know what I said."

"She said she wants to pour honey on your body and lick it off," a dark man with an evil smirk on his face told them from the booth behind where they were sitting.

"Thanks mister," she growled. "In a city this big there had to be a dude that speaks Italian right there."

Leon laughed for a moment. When he had himself under control he answered. "That could be arranged later, if you're sure it's what you want," he said, leering down at Tempest playfully. "I mean, who would I be to prevent you from doing something you really wanna do? I'll try my hardest to let you do things to my person with honey. It'll be a real hardship, but I'll tough it out. It's all just part of helping you have the best vacation possible."

"You'd have to tough out the beating you'd get after the fact if you-know-who caught wind of it."

"You're gonna really hurt my pride if you keep on sayin' I couldn't hold my own in this fight that's gonna happen when we get married, T. I might not be as big as him, but I can keep up."

She laughed at Leon's assurance and picked up a menu. As she was looking it over, an idea popped into her head. A crazy, loony, but ultimately wicked idea for a practical joke. "Isn't Vegas only like four hours from here? At the speed limit?"


	25. Of Pancakes and Calculating Revenge

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Twenty Five – **Of Pancakes and Calculating Revenge**

"Yeah, why?" Jesse asked.

"Because I was just thinking it'd be fuckin' hilarious to make sure we're gone for about eight hours, show up back at the house and pretend we were gone so long because Leon and I eloped to Vegas and got married. I could go to the mall, get a new outfit and show up home wearin' it so I wouldn't have to get ready for races after we 'got home'. I'll get white so it'll look like it's what I wore to my wedding. We could get some of those tin wedding rings at a dollar store, you know, the ones people use for crafts."

"You're fuckin' evil." Leon grinned. "I like it. They'll all fuckin' shit."

"Remember the time that Vince convinced us Letty was pregnant with twins and Dom wasn't the father and he found out and beat her to death, but they were all in on it but us? This could be payback for that," Jesse said, clearly getting into the whole idea more the more he thought about it. "This would be the practical joke to end practical jokes. You two can pretend to be sloshed when we get home and I'll be all put out like I had to drive your drunk asses all the way home and listen to you suckin' face in the back seat the whole way."

"I'll carry my new bride over the threshold of course, and stumble drunkenly while I do so. They'll never know what hit 'em."

"This is gonna rock." Tempest smiled gleefully and closed her menu with a snap. "I think I'll celebrate with blueberry pancakes. Does that sound suitably festive for the morning of my wedding?"

"Only if you have honey on them. It'll get you in the mood for later." Leon wagged his eyebrows up and down suggestively with a grin.

She chuckled. "I'ma so show up with a bag of whip cream and honey and chocolate sauce for our 'honeymoon'. They're all gonna flip the fuck out."

"How much of this is to get one back at Vince?" Leon asked before he could think better of it. He forgot wasn't supposed to know about the fight.

"Some of it," she admitted. "Some of it's just because it's a really good joke. If I really wanted to get back at V, I wouldn't use you to do it with. You two'll be boys long after I'm just a distant memory, so how'd it be right for me to start shit between you over a week of what amounts to me ignorin' him?"

"You thought you were done with him once before," Jesse reminded gently.

"Yeah, I did. And I let him back in and it was stupid. I don't make a habit of making the same mistake twice. But it's gonna go a long way toward making it up when I see the look on his face when he thinks I married Leon. Even if it is only for five minutes."

"We should be able to sell it for longer than five minutes. Just how far are you willin' to take this?"

"How far does it have to go?" she asked, raising a brow in question.

"What if it has to go to my room, and some noises have to be made?"

"I'm down with that." She grinned. "This is gonna rock."

"We're finally gonna get them back." Jesse smirked. "We been waiting long enough."

The waitress came to their table and they ordered. They finished their plans over breakfast and left the restaurant. Then they did spend a few hours on the beach, lounging in the sun. When they were done, the boys took her to the mall and she went shopping for her 'wedding dress'.

"Leon, it's really scaring me how well you know where to shop for ladies clothes."

"I've had a few girlfriends in my day. And sometimes I even went shopping with them. I know what I like to see my ladies in."

"Not much," Jesse broke in with a laugh.

"Well, true. But before we get to that stage, I like to have a stage of seeing them clothed in nice clothes."

"You two are horrible." Tempest held up a shirt. "What about this?"

"Too everyday," Leon vetoed. "We'll keep looking."

"We're not really getting married, Leon. It's a joke, remember?"

"It's a joke today Gorgeous, but someday you'll be my wife and we'll drive our matching cars around and have the most beautiful green eyed kids anyone ever saw," he answered, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "What's wrong with me that I'm a second place substitute in this situation, huh?"

"The fact that you feel like a relation to me, just like Jess? I think that has somethin' to do with it," she said with a smile.

"Yeah, maybe," he answered, grinning back.

"Well, for the rest of tonight, you better remember that you aren't related. You're gonna have to play it over the top if we're gonna make them believe you guys realized you're so in love that you ran off and got married today."

"Oh, don't worry cuz. We'll sell it."

"In the end a pretty girl is a pretty girl. I won't have any problems living up to my end of the deal." Leon grinned evilly. He then picked up a filmy white shirt off a rack and held it up. "This is more like what I had in mind."

Tempest looked at it critically. It had delicate spaghetti straps which crossed in the back. It was cut like a bikini top in the chest, and was lined in the top. Flowing from the top half was a filmy, unlined section which was slit from the bottom all the way up to the narrow band that ran just under the bosom. "I like it. But what am I gonna do for pants?"

"We'll keep looking."

In the end, she ended up with Leon's top, a pair of white cotton pants which were fitted across the top and thighs but flared out over her feet. She found a pair of new flip flops, white with diamante stars on the strap and a pair of shades with a diamante star on the right hand lens. She added a pair of rhinestone earrings which had stars of various size dangling in various lengths, from right under her lobe all the way to brush her shoulders. They made her change in the bathroom and decided the effect was just what they were looking for. They stopped for her 'supplies' on the way home, and then pulled up to the house. It was ten on the nose when Jesse parked the car.

"You guys ready?"

"Its show time," Tempest answered, grinning.

"Yeah, it's on," Leon added, also grinning a mile wide.

Jesse started up the front walk. Leon followed, an arm around his 'wife's' waist. Due to the amount of liquor she'd had with her dinner, Tempest's drunken sway wasn't all for show. She wasn't drunk, but she was slightly tipsy. She knew it was stupid, but in order to find the courage to pull this kind of prank on someone with the temper of Vince, who looked at her as his own personal property, she needed the Dutch courage. Her bag of props was firmly wrapped around her wrist. When Leon crested the top stair of the porch he swung her up into his arms.

"You ready to be in love with me, Gorgeous?"

"I'm already drownin' in those beautiful eyes."

"Good girl."

Jesse pushed the door open, forcing himself to wipe the grin off his face. He started to scowl, hoping he looked like a man who had just spent the day watching his best friend and cousin get married and make out in front of him.

As soon as they walked past the living room door, Dom called out, "where the hell were you guys?"

"You don't wanna fuckin' know," Jesse answered, rolling his eyes.

It was like Dom and the rest of the group picked then to realize that Leon and Tempest were lost in each other's eyes and Tempest was in Leon's arms.

"Why don't I wanna know?" Dom growled.

"Only 'cause they got drunk and decided that they were in love. They were gonna drive themselves to Vegas, but since I didn't want to let them end up dead on the freeway, I ended up doin' it and then I had to listen to them in the back of the car the whole way home."

"Why'd you drive them to Vegas?" Vince asked in a growl.

"Why else do people go to Vegas?" Jesse asked, still acting put out. "They wanted to get married. I can't imagine wanting to marry someone I'd only known for a week. But I guess they now know they were made for each other." Jesse rolled his eyes again with a sigh. "I hope they're right, 'cause they're married now. Better or worse kinda shit."

"'Cuse me?" Vince asked.

"Yeah, married. Some shit, huh?" Jesse shook his head.

Tempest picked that moment to kick the charade into high gear. "Li desidero prenderli alla base e trasformarli un parfait caldo del fondente," she whispered, just loud enough for the rest of the room to hear. She continued to look up at Leon, hoping the look on her face said 'I want to eat you up.'

"I don't know what you just said, but when you say things to me in that language I go crazy. I can't wait any longer to take you to bed."

She took his head between her hands and kissed him on the mouth. "That works, based on what I just said."

Vince growled, knowing full well exactly what she just said. If she wanted to be anyone's hot fudge Sundae it wasn't going to be Leon's. He didn't know what they were up to, but when he found out he was going to kick Leon's ass and tan hers so red she couldn't sit down for the rest of the time she was there. Then he noticed the gold bands on both their fingers. _What the fuck? _They had wedding rings?

Without another word to the rest of the group, Leon headed for the kitchen, and the basement stairs. He kept looking down at the woman in his arms with what he hoped was a besotted look. He was really going for totally wrapped up in her, and he thought he was doing a pretty good job when he heard someone slam a fist into a wall. His money was on Vince being the one to attempt to break the plaster. He got a funny feeling in his gut when he realized just how pissed Vince really was, but they were in too deep to go back now.

As soon as they were out of sight, Tempest giggled, trying to mask the sound. "It's working better than we even thought," she whispered. "I really hope that Jesse can keep up his end while we're not in the room."

"Jesse'll do alright." Leon started down the stairs. "I just hope I don't really have to kick V's ass. I won't let him beat the shit outta me over a joke, and he's seriously pissed off. Did you hear him try to smash a hole in the wall?"

"Yeah," she grinned with glee as she said it. "Dom looked like his head was gonna pop too. They're not likely to forgive us right away when they find out this is a gag are they?"

"No," Leon shook his head. "We're gettin' them pretty good. I'd think it's gonna be awhile before they totally forget it."

"Thought so."

They made it to Leon's room and shut the door. Leon threw Tempest back on his bed. She landed on her back, laughing like a loon. "So now what?" she asked.

"We wait to hear them comin' down the stairs, and then we put on the rest of the show."

"Which is?"

"We start talkin' dirty to each other and makin' the appropriate noises in the middle of it all, of course." He smirked.

"This's gonna be the hard part for me."

"Why's that?"

"I'm not much good at dirty talk."

"Well, since I gather V knows that, in the name of keepin' it real, just make the appropriate noises. I'll keep up the dirty talk end." Leon winked.

"Do I wanna know?"

"If you do, you better get out your hot fudge."


	26. Of Betrayals and Credible Stories

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Twenty Six – **Of Betrayals and Credible Stories**

Back in the living room, Jesse was watching Dom's mouth open and close like a fish out of water. It was clear that Dom didn't know just what to say to express himself about what he had just witnessed. Letty and Mia both looked dazed and Vince was pacing in front of the fireplace like a caged tiger. Jesse was slightly worried about what was going to happen when the fact Leon and Tempest were downstairs together finally totally occurred to him.

"Explain to me again how they came to decide they wanted to be married?" Dom asked, voice low and dangerous.

Jesse had some qualms on the situation of Dom's reaction too. His friend was seriously annoyed, and that might just have been the understatement of the century. "On the way to the diner for breakfast we took her car, and some song by Led Zeppelin started to play and Leon quizzed her about her taste in music. He sorta jokingly asked her to marry him because with her taste in cars and music it was clear they were meant for each other, in his opinion. She joked back about bein' too young to wanna settle down and that was sorta the end of that. Then she said something in French, just because she knows a little bit of it, and Leon started asking her again, to marry him and talk French to him. She told him she didn't know enough French to actually talk in it to him, and he told her he didn't care as long as it sounded French, it didn't have to make sense." Jesse smiled at the memory.

To the rest of the room, it looked like he was remembering the craziness and actually added credibility to his story.

"And how did that end up with them really getting married again?" Letty asked. She was both put out that someone got married before her and Dom, and shocked that Tempest, who she thought she knew pretty good considering they'd only known each other a week, had done something of this magnitude to Vince.

"Well, from there we ended up at the diner and he kept pestering her to say something else in French, so she said something about loving the pineapple 'cause it was the only phrase she could remember off the top of her head and he laughed when she translated it. Then he wouldn't leave her alone, so she looks up at him with this—at the time fake—look of love and rushed out something in a different language. And Leon's all like, that didn't sound like French, and she's all like, it was Italian. He's like do I wanna know what you said? And she's like, no, and Jesse really don't want to. So she wouldn't translate what she said, but then the dude behind us turns out to speak Italian and he's like she said she wants to pour honey on you and lick it off. And then it was like Leon looked down at her again and the look was just—different. And he made some crack about being willing to let her do so, if she really wanted to, because who was he to keep her from doing things she really wanted to do. But it was like he wasn't really joking anymore. And she looked back up at him and it was like she saw him differently too. And that was when they decided they were gettin' married."

"How'd they end up drunk if they decided to get married sober, at breakfast?" Vince growled.

"They insisted on getting champagne for the ride there. I mean," Jesse stammered in his haste to explain before Vince rushed him. His big friend was seriously as angry as Jesse had ever seen him. "They were gonna go whether I took them or not. If I didn't take them, they were just gonna drink the bottle of champagne on the way there, while one of them was driving. I really had no choice but take them. I couldn't find out that my cousin got killed because I thought what they were doin' was crazy and refused to go. I tried to reason with them, tried to make them take some time to think it over, but they didn't want to wait." He turned to Dominic, who was looking a bit green around the edges now that the anger was receding a bit in the face of what seemed to be the reality of the situation. "My cousin, I know you don't know her that well, but she's like gasoline. When she gets an idea into her head it's like a puddle of gas on fire. There's no dealin' with it until it burns itself out. And Leon never has been exactly the one to take his time and think things over."

"But they married each other after a week of knowing each other and seeming to look at each other as relations," Mia said, clearly in acute shock. She couldn't rationalize Tempest, the most overly analytical person she'd ever met, just up and deciding to marry Leon on a whim over breakfast. Especially not after what she'd seen in the kitchen the night before. There was something fishy going on. She just couldn't figure out what. The pair had looked at each other like they really couldn't wait to go consummate their marriage vows. They were after all, at present, in Leon's room with a bag of, what had looked like, whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and honey. But when she and Vince had been together in the kitchen, they had looked so wrapped up in each other. And Tempest didn't seem like the kind of girl with such fickle attentions.

Jesse shrugged. "I dunno what to tell you. I really don't. It was what they wanted, so they said." His happiness that his friends were buying the story was tempered by the extreme anger rolling off Vince, still from Dom slightly too.

"We're going to get to the bottom of this, and the only way we're going to get the whole story is straight from them." Dom stood up. "I'm going to go find out just what they were thinking."

"Shouldn't you give them some time to come back upstairs?" Jesse asked. "I mean, you didn't hear them in the car. They're not likely in a position to talk right now. I'm just glad they waited until we got home. I would've crashed the car into a sign post or median in self defence if they'd gone any closer to finishing what they started while we were still driving along the interstate."

"I'm with Dom," Vince growled. The mental image of 'Trouble' and Leon in the back seat of her car, doing the kind of things together that she did with him was making him so angry he didn't know how it was he didn't have his shotgun in his hands yet, and Leon's besotted face in the sights.

"I think it's a really bad idea," Jesse warned again. When it was clear that Dom and Vince were going to do just what he knew they would, and not what he suggested they do instead, he rushed along with them. He wanted to make sure to pound down the stairs loud enough that his cousin had her 'husband' knew it was time to keep the prank going.

"I'm gettin' stage fright! How long is it gonna take them to decide to come give us the third degree already?" Tempest was still reclined in Leon's bed, licking chocolate sauce off her finger as she waited for the show to begin. It had already been over a minute since they'd gone down the stairs, and she really hadn't figured on Dom or Vince being able to wait more than a few seconds to come and roar at them.

"I dunno. I figured on Vince only being a second or two behind us," Leon answered. "Gimme some of that stuff. It looks good."

"It is, if you like chocolate." She sat up on her knees at the edge of the bed with a grin and squirted some of the sauce on her finger. "Here you go," she held the digit out to him. He surprised her by taking the end of her finger into his mouth and licking the sticky chocolate off.

"That is good."

"You want more?"

"Sure."

She made to hand him the bottle.

"You're not gonna keep on feeding it to me? We're supposed to be newlyweds!" He smirked.

She put another dollop on her finger. "Here you go baby," she crooned, before smearing the chocolate across his bottom lip. He licked it off and as she watched him do so, she squirted more onto her finger and ate it herself.

"Considering how neatly you eat everything else, you sure ain't good at this chocolate sauce eatin' thing. It's all over your face."

"No it isn't," she assured, despite being able to feel the sticky spots around her mouth which were proving him right.

"Yes it is." He took the bottle from her and squirted some of the sauce onto his finger before smearing it across her bottom lip. "Now it really is."

She moved to lick the sticky stuff off her lip.

"No, let me." He stopped her and leaned down close before swiping his tongue across her chocolately lower lip. "It definitely tastes better that way." He coated her lip in chocolate again, and licked it off again. He really wasn't sure what he thought he was doing, but he was going to tell himself he was just getting in character for when his friends came down to finish the prank. He looked down at his slightly dazed and confused looking partner in crime. "Aren't you gonna take care of the stuff on my lip? Isn't it only fair?" He watched as she swayed forward the slight amount needed to allow her to reach his face, watched as she copied his action, her pink tongue swiping across his lip. "Aw fuck it," he growled before taking her head in his hands and leaning down, kissing her properly, his tongue running along the seam of her lips until they parted. Her hands came up into the hair on the back of his head and her fingers started to tease it as she kissed him back almost shyly.

He tasted like chocolate and sin, and she wasn't sure what she thought she was doing. There was making a convincing practical joke, and then there was taking it one step too far. She was pretty sure what they were doing was taking it many steps too far. Like a mile worth of hard running steps past the line of acceptable. _And let this be a lesson why you should never allow yourself to be taken into a hot guy's bedroom with a bag of sex food after pretending to be his wife for the last three hours, no matter who he is. Hormones have a lot to answer for!_

Much as she tried to rationalize things, tried to tell herself that she had never made any sort of real commitment to Vince, she didn't really buy it, not at all. Maybe she never had made a real commitment to him. But she wasn't the kind of girl to spend a week acting like she was his girl, and then jump into the bed of one of his best friends. Whether she was free to get with another guy if she didn't want to be with Vince or not, it wasn't right for her to pick one of his friends to be that other guy, and no matter how out of her mind she was, she knew it. But it was hard to do anything about it when that other guy had his hands on her body, his lips against hers, and was kissing her in a way that proved he knew what he was about on the subject of kissing girls. Not to mention doing it all while his lips and tongue tasted like chocolate. So, right or wrong, that was why she didn't put a stop to what was going on. She knew she intended to, but the road to hell was paved with good intentions. So she didn't. She let him keep on doing what he was doing instead.

That was until she felt his hand wander down from her neck to cup one of her breasts. Before she could stop him, which she swore was what she had intended to do, he pinched her nipple gently through her shirt. Her head fell back with a moan. She was only human, and Leon knew his way around a woman's body, that was for sure. Her hands slid out of his hair to hold his shoulders. And it felt all wrong. The shoulders under her fingers were too narrow, the bones not covered by quite enough muscle. It was just _wrong_, and she finally saw that. No matter what he was doing to her sanity. It wasn't him she really wanted. And moreover, since it was one of his best friends that she did want to have doing those things to her, it was doublely wrong. "Leon," she whispered.

"Um?" he grunted as he started to slide the strap of her top down her arm, following its path with his mouth.

"Leon!"

"What?" he muttered against her collarbone. He knew what was coming. Not that he wanted to hear it, but he knew he was going to, and knew it was what was right. But damn, he didn't want to hear it. Not now. Just another five seconds and he would have had the enticing little pebble of flesh still hidden by her shirt in his mouth.

"This was supposed to be a prank. If we do what we're moving toward doing, it's going to stop being a prank and start being real. A real betrayal. I don't want that. I don't want to be that girl. So, much as I actually do want you, in the heat of this moment, this isn't right."

"You had to be the sane one, didn't you?" he asked, cupping her face between his hands and kissing her forehead. She nodded. "Thank you for that. You're right. I don't want to do this to my friends in the name of a joke." He slid the strap of her shirt back up her arm, almost like he needed to do so to remind himself things were done. "Much as I do want to do this for me, myself and I, I don't want to end up hurting you and them as bad as this would."

She nodded that she understood. "So, are we gonna keep up the act if they ever come down here, or just let it end with however well Jess convinced them upstairs?"

"We're gonna finish the act Gorgeous. We made a very brief, very enjoyable, mistake and now we're back on track." He crawled onto his bed and flopped back on the pillows. "Come 'ere."

She settled back with her head on his stomach and her feet hanging off the side of the bed. Just when they were comfortable they heard the sound of Jesse's footsteps pounding down the stairs. "I guess it's on then," she said, smiling. "Think you're ready?"

"I know I'm ready."

She cocked an eyebrow and waited until the footsteps stopped, figuring they were then outside the door. "Oh Leon, you got some of the chocolate in my belly button. How'm I gonna get it outta there?"

"Don't worry 'bout it Gorgeous. I'll take care of it."

She laughed breathlessly, glad that the look on his face cracked her up. "Your tongue tickles in there."

"This won't tickle," he grinned.

She forced a loud gasp. "Oh, you're right! That doesn't tickle. Don't stop!"

He put his mouth into the crook of his arm to muffle his voice and moaned.

"Is that what you were telling me you could do with your tongue in the car?"

He choked on his startled laughter when she asked her moaned question. "When I said I was gonna make you," he allowed his question to trail off, as though he'd gotten in close to her ear and was now whispering.

"Yeah," she gasped, getting into the act now that it was really all just play again.

"No. If I really wanted to make you scream," he raised an eyebrow to illustrate his point, "I'd do that with my tongue while I did this with my fingers."


	27. Of Roads to Hell and Good Intentions

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Twenty Seven – **Of Roads to Hell and Good Intentions**

When Tempest's very happy scream rent the air, the indecision everyone in the downstairs living room had been dealing with seemed to melt away. Vince moved to push the door open first.

"Um, I don't think we should be bothering them right now," Jesse tried to stall. He was shocked that his cousin and friend were able to put on such a convincing imitation of two people having sex when they were really just pretending. His honest shock added to his put out and confused act, making it all the more convincing.

Dom rubbed his head. "I guess Jesse's right. What's done is done. We don't need to walk in on them when they're," he trailed off, unsure how to finish his sentence.

"You might not, but I have a fuckin' big score to settle. With both of 'em," Vince growled and moved to take the doorknob in his hand again.

"Shit! Leon! Where did you learn to do that?"

The breathless question was his breaking point. Vince threw the door open. It crashed against the wall behind it and bounced off, almost rebounding to hit him in the face. He pushed past it into the room.

With a shrug, figuring since Vince had already interrupted things, the rest of them might as well get their answers and be present to stop the carnage, Dom followed Vince into the room. He had to push around Vince, who was frozen just beyond the doorway. When he finally made it past Vince fully into the room, he looked at the bed and snarled.

Everyone else filed into the room and moved to stand in a shocked semicircle around the bed. They took in the fully clothed and relaxed positions of the two people in the bed. Jesse cracked up laughing even as Leon smirked and Tempest gave a flippant little wave from where she was laying, reclined against Leon. "What would ya'll have done if we were actually doin' the nasty in here?"

"Killed you both," Vince snarled. "Not that that isn't still an option."

"This was a joke?" Dom asked, seemingly in shock.

"Fuckin' got you good," Leon drawled, grinning. "'Member that time you guys all convinced us you killed Lett in a fit of jealous rage? Consider yourself gotten back, fuckers."

"You should see the look on your faces right now," Jesse snickered, slapping Vince and Dom off the back as he stood between them.

"Good one," Dom admitted grudgingly, shaking his head as he left the room. He was so relived that Leon wasn't actually married to Tempest he couldn't even find himself all that angry at them for what they'd done. But he still felt a bit queasy when he thought about what Vince was likely to do about the whole situation. With a shake of his head he decided it didn't matter. They were going to be late for races as it was. "We gotta go."

Letty and Mia left the room, grinning and shaking their heads. The prank had been very well executed and they knew they had it coming for the first one they'd played on Leon and Jesse. _I knew something was up_, Mia mused. Soon everyone had left the room but Leon, Tempest and Vince.

"A fuckin' joke? You thought this was a funny joke?" Vince snarled.

"Yeah, flippin' hilarious actually," Tempest answered. "We got the lot of you good. Oh Leon!" she moaned, before busting up laughing.

"Where the fuck did the rings come from?"

"Craft store," Leon answered, throwing his at Vince, who caught it before crushing it flat.

Fake rings, fake sex. _They're very fuckin' lucky it was all fake. _"Can I see you in the other room?" Vince snarled at Tempest.

"After races. We gotta go or Dom's gonna while the fuck out."

"Then we'll miss races for tonight 'cause I wanna talk to you."

"And we'll talk. After races. I ain't missin' them. My turn to take _my_ car down, 'member?"

"I don't care about the fuckin' Skyline right now."

"No, but I do, and Dom said it was time to go. They'll be time after for talkin'." She turned back to Leon, and he saw the anxiety on her face. She was worried that Vince might actually hold her back, force her to stay home with him, and it was obvious she didn't want to, and wasn't ready. "You comin' dearest?"

"Be right there, Honey," he quipped back, being sure to emphasize honey.

Vince growled again. "The two of you are both gonna wish you'd never cooked this up when we get home."

"Get over it V," Leon said, smirking. "You guys got Jess and I the last time, made us think that Dom killed Letty and we all had to take off so he didn't end up back in jail. Now we got you guys back. Don't act like it's the end of the world. It's not like we were really doin' it in here."

"Guys, we gotta go. There will be loads of time to fight or talk about this whole prank after races. Let's roll." She waited for Leon to stand up and sling an arm around her shoulders before she even attempted to get out of the room past Vince. She wouldn't put it past him for a second to grab her and hold her in the house against her will. And then she'd have to fight him and she really didn't know what the aftermath would be, let alone if she could hold her own when he was this pissed off. She and Leon walked out of the room together, Vince walking behind them. She felt the need to turn around and see where he was, and what the look on his face was like, but she fought it. She knew letting on that she knew he was pissed off, and that she'd done something to contribute to his state, wasn't smart.

Leon pushed Tempest up the stairs in front of him so Vince wouldn't have a chance to grab her. He put her in her car before going around the nose of it to get in his own. He watched as she started the car quickly and pulled out onto the street behind Mia. Vince got into the Maxima with a shake of his head and backed it down the driveway. Leon started his own car and backed onto the street as well. So far, so good. They were on the road without Vince putting a hand on anyone or doing too much yelling. Things were going fairly well, all things considered. Everyone but Vince had taken the prank pretty well. He couldn't wait to get Jesse to fill him in on how it had gone upstairs. With a groan, he realized he'd need to make up a good story of what he and Tempest had done while they waited to hear the rest of the crew coming down the stairs. He couldn't have any hesitation in his voice, especially not if Dom or Vince was around to hear it. The last thing they needed was for anyone else to find out how close of a call it had been for them to really be interrupting what they thought they had been.

Much as she was trying not to be, Tempest was afraid of how her conversation with Vince was going to go down. It was going to overshadow her time at races because she was going to be worrying about what to say to him after, and how to say it. She really didn't want to be with him anymore. She'd told him so that morning. She knew he had chosen to take her saying they were done as in done with their conversation, not done as in we no longer have a relationship. So now she had to break it to him in a way that wouldn't leave any question how serious she was, but wouldn't make him flip the fuck out either. She really didn't think she had the words to accomplish both those tasks. She doubted very much that anyone did, which was a small comfort. She realized they were about to reach the alleyway, and allowed herself to fall to the back of the V, back with Mia, who had elected to take her own car.

They flew down the center of the two rows of parked cars, coming to a stop at the end of the path. She parked the car and got out before looking around. And that was when she saw Craig Everett heading her way. She groaned. Of all the nights to forget that she had told Craig to come see her car, it had to be the night she had pissed Vince off to the edge by pretending to marry his best friend. None of that was Craig's fault, so she was going to have to play nice and show him the Skyline, all while hoping Vince didn't kill him, or her, or the two of them together. Boy, she led a complicated life in California. _Oh_ _what a tangled web we weave!_ With all the balls she was always juggling in the air, she was surprised that she hadn't felt them all fall down on her head yet.

"Hey you!" she called out to Craig as he strolled up. "Well, this is him." She gestured toward her shining car.

"Holy shit. You weren't kidding when you said you couldn't do it justice with words, were you?" he asked rhetorically, walking around the outside of the car and letting out a low whistle.

She leaned back on the driver's door and grinned. "Thank you. It's no more than I deserve, but thank you."

Craig stopped beside the passenger side door, grinning at her lack of modesty. "May I?"

"Sure, go crazy." She motioned for him to open the door.

He did so, before whistling again. "This is totally hot. I can't believe this smokin' ride is going to spend most of its life in the back of beyond."

"There are perks to being the biggest fish in a very small pond."

"Until you kick the ass of everyone else in the scene and end up bored out of your mind because no one will try to take you."

"Well, where I come from, that'll take a while. Trust me. There will always be some new idiot who figures no matter what she drives, ain't no way a female can take him."

"You got no call to worry on this front. I know I likely can't take you."

She scowled. "In a RX-7 with a Cosmo? Please. You could give me a good run."

He smiled. "Well yeah, I could. But in the end you'd still win."

"I know," she smirked. She watched as Craig slammed the door shut and moved around the car to stand in front of her. _Can this possibly be a good thing?_

"So," Craig started, looking down at her. "I know this isn't any of my business, so please tell me to butt out if you want, but what's up with you and Toretto's friend, anyway?"

She blew out a breath. "The answer to that is complicated."

"Everything is with that crew."

"Yeah, no kiddin'. Well," she started, pausing to think about how to sum up what was, or at least had been, between her and Vince. "He pushed me from the second I met him. Constantly in my face, makin' wise cracks, constantly pushing me to see how far he could get away with. And I'm constantly pushin' back for the same reason. Sparks flew from the second we met," she said, shrugging a shoulder. "But, that's about all we have in common. He's into Dom's sister, not me. And every time I attempt to tell him that I don't want any kind of relationship with him anymore but a friendship he refuses to take that for an answer. I told him again this morning that we were over and done with, but the boy's as thick as a milkshake and refuses to let the idea into his thick skull."

"Yeah, no kidding. Judging by the look currently on his face, he's having some issues with me talking to you and he's on his way over here to drive home to me just what he'll do about those issues if I don't shove off."

"Well," she smiled tightly, a look of chagrin on her face. "I kinda played a little joke on the whole house with the help of Jess and Leon today, and it didn't go over very well. We convinced them all that Leon and I eloped. Vince didn't see the humour. And since the joke just played out about half an hour ago, he's really not over it yet."

"I think that's a fair sized understatement. I should likely go before he really explodes, if you think you're going to be ok left alone with him, that is?"

"Yeah, he won't start shit in a crowd this big. I don't think. 'Sides, Leon knows enough to keep an eye on me after the shit that hit the fan at the house."

"Ok. Well, I'll see you around. Perhaps some day when Vince doesn't want to kill me."

She chuckled. "Don't hold your breath waiting on that day."

He laughed back. "Oh I won't, trust me. Maybe we'll run into each other some day when he's not around."

"Maybe we will. Ciao," she called out, glad Vince was only close enough to hear the good-bye she offered.

"What're you doin', talkin' to that punk again?" he snarled.

"I guess just what it looked like. I was talking to him. 'Sides, he ain't no punk. He's just a guy I met. And you got no call to have an opinion who I talk to." As usual, his attitude put her fur up. He was always pushing her to see how far he could take her, and she was always pushing back for the same reason. It never stopped. And it always seemed to end with one or both of them blowing up in the face of it.

"I got every call when I'm the one you've been sleeping with every night, when I'm the one with images of you waking up naked in _my_ bed."

"Enjoy that image, 'cause memories are all you're gonna have of it from now on." Her temper made her snap at him, admitting something she hadn't planned to get into until they were away from the prying eyes of the public.

"Come again?"

She sighed. "Listen, I didn't want to go into this here. Can't it wait until we get home?"

"No it can't fuckin' wait 'til we get home. What do you mean memories is all I'm gonna have from now on?"

"When I told you we were done this morning Vince, I didn't mean done arguing, done talkin'. I meant done, as in there is no us. Whatever we were playing at is over. I don't want it anymore." She looked up at him from where she was still reclined against the side of her car. She hoped he could read her sincerity and seriousness from the look on her face. She hoped he couldn't see the hurt, and the fact that while her brain agreed with her mouth, her heart did no such thing.

"Is that what the whole thing with Leon was over?" he growled. "You cookin' up some fucked up scheme to get back at me for this mornin'? Because it fuckin' well worked. Consider it a great success and let it fuckin' drop."

"No, it wasn't about that." _Well, it _wasn't_, not totally_. "The boys wanted to get you all back for what you'd done before and we came up with the prank we did to accomplish it. Me leaving the house without you and telling you we were through was about the fight we had this morning." She met his eyes again. "Me tellin' you we're done now is about me. I don't want it anymore," she reiterated firmly.

He crowded her against the side of her car, bringing a hand up to cup the side of her head as the other hand found her hip and he cupped it, his thumb stroking idle circles against the exposed skin he found where her top didn't quite meet her low rise pants. He leaned in close and brushed his lips against hers, a feather touch. He repeated it a second time, an equally gentle brush of his mouth against hers, before he nibbled gently at the corner of her mouth. When he felt her hands leave their position where they had been pressed flat against the door panel of her car, and come up to rest softly on his shoulders, he fought to keep a smug smile of triumph off his face. He kissed her more deeply, caressing his tongue against hers even as his thumb started a soft stroking against her cheekbone. "Tell me you don't want me," he muttered against her lips when he stopped kissing her.

"I don't want you," she said, her voice soft.

"Make me believe it. Tell me you don't want me so I believe it." His hand left her hip to splay flat on her belly.

"I don't want you anymore," she repeated. The heat of his hand on her bare stomach seemed to radiate right through her. "I don't want _this_ anymore," her voice was thready with the very want she was denying.

"I don't believe you. Tell me I couldn't have you right now if I wanted, right here in the middle of all these people, all our friends, your family. Tell me and mean it."

"I can't," she ground out, irate with her body's betray. "I can't tell you any of it and mean it because it isn't true. When you put your hands on me I want you. When you're close to me it's the same story. But that's my body. That's physical." Hurt green eyes met triumphant blue. "But my heart doesn't want you anymore. My mind is finally too smart to let you in willingly. So while you _can_ have me by playing my physical reactions to you against my mind, heart and soul, you'll just break me a little more inside every time. So if that's how you want me, go ahead. Take me, right here in front of all these people. Against the side of my car, if you want." She looked away from his eyes and stared out over the writhing sea of humanity ebbing and flowing around the various groups of people like water around rocks in a riverbed.

The triumph left his face quickly. He sighed. "I never started out to hurt you."

"I know you didn't. I guess I even know you couldn't help it. But you did. And I'm so sick of being angry all the time."

"We're good together Trouble."

She shrugged, looking up at him in sadness. "Good sex just isn't enough. We're not good for each other V. All we do is fight and fuck." She hoped bluntness would keep the conversation on track. Keep him focused on the fact she meant every word she was saying, even if she couldn't back up her wants with her real, deep down feelings.

"The first one makes the second one better," he growled. He was getting a funny feeling that he wasn't going to change her mind. She seemed really serious. Not that she hadn't the twenty or so odd other times they'd fought over the span of seven days. But this time she seemed really resolved. He had a feeling unfurling in his gut that she wasn't going to be swayed away from her path with a few hot kisses and hotter words murmured into her ear this time.

"That might be true. And maybe if that was all it was I'd have an easier time accepting the whole situation at face value. Maybe if I wasn't the third person in this situation, and the second place substitute at that, I could accept the whole 'casual sex' situation. But at some point in time I had to start valuing myself for more than I'm gettin', 'cause I'm not even gettin' that. I think, as long as you're holding out for more with someone else, both of us will be better off in the long run if the girls you see are only after the same one thing you are. I'm not that girl, no matter how much we both might wish I was."

"So that's it, huh?"

"Yeah," she sighed through her nose. "That's it."

"Do you really have a thing for Leon?" he asked, his eyes narrowed into suspicious slits.

"No, I don't have a thing for Leon." She rolled her eyes to illustrate how absurd she found his accusation. Inside, she hoped she was selling it with total assurance. He couldn't possibly ever find out. Not if she and Leon were going to be allowed to live.

"So this is about that Craig guy then," he questioned further. He hadn't totally missed the little flair of something in her eyes when she had so vehemently denied having feelings for Leon. He let it go, with difficulty, telling himself it was just because she was worried just how upset he was about the joke they had played on him.

Relief he remained ignorant to how close to the truth he'd come wasn't enough to temper the anger she felt over his inability to see the situation wasn't over her being fickle, but over him being an idiot. "No, this is about you!" she said, poking him in the chest in the hopes of making her point stick. How could he honestly be so thick, so oblivious? "This is about you, and your expectations and actions, verses my expectations and reactions to your actions. There doesn't have to be another guy I like for me to stop wanting to be with you. I didn't have a guy when I landed here and I won't have one when I leave. This is about me, and my inability to convince myself this is ok anymore, that this is enough. I could make it enough, if it was just you'n me having a little somethin' fun while I'm around. But there's always this third person just beyond my vision and I can't pretend it don't matter anymore. Can't look past it and pretend I don't know anymore."

He had never told her there would be more. Had always been up front about things. So why was she making him feel like an asshole over it now? "I never lied to you. Not once."

"I know you didn't, and I never said you did. But do you think that makes it better? That that somehow makes it ok?"

It was his turn to sigh. He did so forcefully, running a hand through his hair. "No, I guess it doesn't." He turned to walk away. "This all your final decision?"

"Yeah," she answered. "It's for the best."

He nodded once, to show he had heard her soft spoken words, not to agree with them, and then walked away without a backward glance. She stayed where she was, leaning with what looked like careless indifference against the side of her car. Only someone who walked right up to her would see the tremors racing through her arms and legs. She studied her feet, sure if she didn't keep looking down, someone would see how upset she was mirrored in her eyes. So instead she looked down at her feet and let her hair form a protective curtain around her and strove for a tough, bad ass look on her face. _He_ _gave you what you wanted without a fight, so why aren't you happier?_


	28. Of Veracity and Blue Streets

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Twenty Eight – **Of Veracity and Blue Streets**

"What do you think she said to him?" Dom asked Leon from their position about ten metres away, beside Dom's car.

"I think she told him that she doesn't want anything else to do with him, but I'm not sure."

"Well, we can hope."

Leon shot Dom a dirty look. He didn't get Dom's constant need to wish ill on Jesse's young cousin. "She looks upset. I'm gonna go make sure she's ok."

"You don't really have feelings for her, do you Leon?"

"Yeah, but not the way you mean." He kept up the pretence, even to Dominic. After all, he wasn't really sure how or what he felt. How was he supposed to share it with someone else if he didn't even know what it was?

"Good."

"What do you have against her anyway, Dawg?" He finally gave voice to his unspoken question, unable to keep the curiosity at bay any longer.

"Wish I knew," Dom answered with a shake of his head.

"Me too," Leon answered, before walking over to Tempest's car and leaning against the door beside her. "So, that looked like it went well." He kept his voice light and conversational on purpose. He knew she'd likely had enough of heavy words for at least a few minutes.

She snorted in sarcastic answer. "That'd be one way to put it."

"And the other way is?"

"That it sucked hardcore."

"What'd you tell him?"

"That I didn't want him no more."

"And I bet he took that real well," Leon said sarcastically, prodding for more information.

"About as well as it would go over with you if I told you I wrote off your car."

"Gee, it went _that_ well?"

"Oh yeah, all that and better." She finally looked away from her feet, staring off over the crowd instead.

He couldn't help but notice her eyes revealed her confusion. "What'd he say when you told him?"

"It wasn't so much what he said as what he did."

"What'd he do?"

"He kissed me."

"That bastard," Leon answered with a gentle chuckle, before throwing an arm over her shoulders.

"You don't get it. He kissed me like he really meant it. Like I don't know if he's ever kissed me before. And then told me to tell him I didn't want him again, like I meant it. But I didn't mean it, so I told him again, but it still didn't sound serious because I _don't_ mean it. And he called me on it. And I," she sighed.

"You what?" he prompted.

"I told him more, and more honestly, than I ever intended."

"How so?"

"Like I told him that I couldn't tell him I didn't want him to make him believe it because it was a lie, and he got this look on his face," she paused to look up at Leon. "You know the one, the fuckin' smug 'I'm the winner' look he does so good."

"Yeah, I know the one," Leon answered, giving her a gentle squeeze around the shoulders.

"And then I told him that it didn't matter what I wanted physically, that my heart and mind knew what we were doing wasn't right, or good for me, and I didn't want it anymore, but he could use my physical attraction to him to work around what I really wanted in my heart, if he was so inclined. That was a bit more ammo than I ever wanted to give him." Strange then, that she didn't mind giving the straight up about her feelings to Leon. She wasn't the one to want to share these things with anyone. But here she was, spilling her deepest thoughts and feelings to someone without any concern he'd think less of her for having 'female' emotions. What was wrong with her?

"And he just took that at face value and walked off?" Leon was incredulous.

"No, first he asked me if this was all because I had real feelings for you, and when I told him no, he asked if it was because I had real feelings for Craig Everett. After I told him it was over him and his expectations and me and mine and my inability to convince myself what we had was enough anymore, that was when he walked off. But he's totally right. He never once lied to me, never once told me there could be more than there was."

"But that doesn't always stop a person from dreamin' about the what if's does it?"

With his question was when her desire to keep her tender feelings and wounds to herself to lick in private returned in abundance. So she merely shrugged in answer, not returning his gaze. When he remained silent she eventually gave an audible answer. "Guess not."

"You gonna be ok?"

She thought a moment. "Yeah, I'ma be alright."

"Good. Look, Letty and Mia are talkin' to a bunch of Edwin and Hector's girls. Wanna go join them?"

"Sure," she replied half heartedly. She allowed Leon to lead her over to the group by the hand.

After walking away from Tempest, Vince found a group of people he knew and started to mix in with them. Not looking around to find where she was now was hard, but he wouldn't allow himself the luxury. Not after she told him she didn't want him anymore. And ok, she hadn't meant it, but she'd still decided to stick by her decision not to have him anymore. Seeing that he could either force her hand, as she admitted he could, or give her her way and take the moral high ground and walk away, he chose to walk away. He'd never had to trick a woman into his bed before, and damned if he was starting now. No matter how much he wanted to. Wanted her. There were other women out there. Women that he wouldn't have to work so hard to have.

And maybe that was why he was in the middle of a group of blondes and brunettes with the odd red head scattered through. It wasn't because she had seemed to give him up easily enough and it stung. No, surely it was because now he was free to go back to having things the way they should be. Now he was free to take home whatever girl he wanted, not the one he'd had once and simply hadn't been able to stop having because of who she was.

With a self depreciating snort, he acknowledged the truth. He simply hadn't been able to stop having her. Who she was had very little to do with it. How she was played a much larger role. But he wasn't going to go chasing after her. It wasn't his style and he wasn't starting now. Wouldn't let himself grin at the image of Bryce looking down her dress while she looked so intent on hitting the cue ball rather than tearing up the table top. Wouldn't let himself laugh at her telling him she might be able to get the keys to the next model up as she teased him. Couldn't let himself remember how much he liked it when she made him pay for things he did wrong around her. 'Cause she was done being mad at him, and done making up with him after. But he didn't really care that much, damn it!

He looked around the alley casually and found her in a group of Hector's friends with Mia and Leon. Leon had an arm draped around her shoulders and they were both listening to something Hector was saying. He fought down an immediate and visceral jealous reaction to seeing 'Trouble' with Leon's arm around her. Their prank was still fresh in his mind, the noises she had made and things she had said playing over and over again in his head. _Damn it, she's mine! Not his_. He shook his head. _Not yours either anymore, remember_? It didn't really seem to matter to him whether she was or not, and it really didn't once Hector reached his punch line and she threw her head back onto Leon's shoulder while she laughed. It mattered even less when Leon laughed down at her more than he was laughing at the joke Hector had told, all while twirling one of her curls around his index finger. How much truth was there to her statement she didn't have real feelings for Leon?

"Tempest, this is Hector, Hector, this is Jesse's cousin, Tempest."

"Jesse? This fine thing is related to Jesse?" Hector asked Leon, his voice full of teasing.

"Yeah, funny how genetics work, ain't it?" Tempest responded with a sly grin.

"Well, genetics sure took better care'a buildin' you than him, that's for sure. Why haven't we met before if you're related to this group of yahoos?"

"I'm not from around. I'm just in town for a few weeks to visit with my cuz."

"That's some ride you rolled up in. Bet Dom loves it you got that."

"That'd be one way to put it," Tempest smirked.

Hector laughed. "I can guess the other ways."

"It ain't hard to guess the other ways."

"Sure isn't. So, you racin' tonight?"

"Naw. I doubt I'll get a chance, I doubt Dom would let me, and my car's barely broken in."

"Let's not play like Dom sayin' no to you'd stop you Gorgeous."

"Ok, it wouldn't," she said, grinning. "But not gettin' asked sure will. So I'll just hang off this beautiful man's arm and play eye candy for the night. After all, we were very briefly married tonight and really should still be on our honeymoon."

Hector got the story out of them, and by the end of it, he and Edwin were holding their sides in pain from all the laughing they did. "So you're with Vince, but you made him, and the rest of the crew, think you just up and married Leon?"

"Was with Vince, but yeah, the rest of its true enough," Tempest confirmed. The call that Dom was about to race tore through the crowd, cutting their conversation short.

"Ok, I'm havin' a party at my club tonight after this is all over. You have to come. All of you, if you want. It's called El Gato Negro. These two know how to get there," Hector said, indicating Jesse and Leon. "Hope I see you there."

"Well see what goes down," Tempest answered, looking up at Leon.

"Whatever you wanna do, Gorgeous. We party at our house all the time after races. If you wanna go to Hector's club, Jesse and I'll go with you."

"Me too," Mia chimed in. "I never get to see the girls from his team anymore and we use to hang out all the time. It'd be fun to wreck someone else's place for a change, instead of cleaning up behind everyone else."

"That settles it then," Jesse said with a grin. "We're going to Hector's club after races."

"We goin' to the finish or what?" Tempest asked as they all headed for their cars.

"Yeah, let's head out to the finish." Jesse answered. They all piled into Leon's car and drove out to the end of the quarter mile. Once the race was over, and Dom had collected his winnings they headed back to the alley. It was still early, as the first race had been called more quickly than usual. As they stood around talking and checking out each other's rides, a rumour started to go through the crowd that another race was going to be run.

"You should get in on this one V. You haven't run in forever," Leon said, trying to start a conversation that would help Vince get over his lingering anger about the joke that had been perpetrated largely against him. He failed to realize that starting any conversation while he still had his arm wrapped around the woman who had essentially dumped Vince earlier in the evening likely wasn't the best way to endear himself to his friend.

Vince thought about Leon's suggestion for a moment, wondering if he wanted to race or not. He did and he didn't. He looked around the group of his friends and finally allowed his gaze to rest on Tempest last of all. She stood against Leon's side, his arm draped around her shoulders still while Jesse was holding her hand on her other side. She was looking at her car, and he wished she'd look at him again with half the longing she had in her eyes looking at that damn Skyline. He was puzzled for a moment why she didn't just go race since she clearly wanted to. The bond she felt between herself and her car was almost palpable it was so strong. Cars were as much a part of her as they were of the rest of the team and how much of her sense of self she had wrapped up in the thirty three hundred pounds of Japanese engineering sitting over beside Leon's yellow beast wasn't hard to see. In fact, she likely felt even more tied to her car than they did. Well, all of them but for Dominic.

Then the reason why she might not step up to race dawned on him as he remembered her telling Jesse she had no money to trick out her car. That likely meant she had no money to throw down on a race either. "Maybe I will," he said to Leon, before wandering off through the crowd.

"I'd like to see Craig get to race Dom," Tempest told Jesse and Leon after Vince had left the group. Without his presence stifling her, she felt free again to open up and be herself. When he was around, she continuously felt the need to run every word she was about to utter through her mind first, to ensure that nothing about any of her statements could instigate in Vince a need to answer to her directly. She knew she couldn't handle talking to him just yet.

"Why's that?" Jesse asked.

"Oh, didn't I tell you?" Tempest asked with a smirk. "Craig's got a Cosmo under the hood."

"Really?" Jesse was clearly shocked.

"Um hum. I think he'd give Dom a good run for his money."

"You know, if Dom thought there was something between you'n that other guy, he likely would race him, just to pound him into the ground to stick it to you," Jesse mused.

"Craig'll get his chance all on his own in time. He's pretty good so sooner or later he's gonna beat the right people and make a name for himself. Then Dom won't be able to say no to the challenge when the day comes."

"True," Jesse conceded.

Before anyone else could pick up a new conversational thread, Vince rejoined the group, followed by Hector and Dom. "Well, aren't you gonna go to the line?" Hector asked Tempest.

"For what?" she asked, shaking her head from side to side and wrinkling her nose in confusion.

"To race," Hector prodded.

"I'm not racin'."

"Than why'd you have that guy come and tell me you were and give me this money?" Hector asked.

"I didn't tell any guy to tell you that, and I sure as hell didn't give anyone any money."

"Well someone did, and it was your name they told me. You're the only Tempest around here girlie."

"It wasn't me," she insisted.

"Who cares cuz? Why wouldn't you wanna go race if someone else put up the money? I'd do it in a heartbeat."

"I guess, but it feels wrong," she said, frowning. She shot a glance at Vince. She wouldn't race against him. She just wouldn't. She couldn't handle hearing about it if she beat him, and she couldn't handle hearing about it if she didn't. She had some worries on that front about who put up the money too. She'd bet all the money she had left that it had been Dominic, looking to see her fall flat on her face. Well fuck that. He was in for a rude surprise.

"Yeah, you might as well, since there were already four by the time I got over there," Vince growled, looking around the area rather than at her, as if he was upset about getting cheated out of his chance to race.

"Take my place," she offered.

"Aw cuz! I wanna see you race. I wanna see your car run! We can see Vince race any night of the week. Go!" Jesse whined.

"Fine. But when I lose because I wasn't ready and barely know my car anymore, I don't wanna hear about it. Got it? Not from anyone, unless whoever brings it up wants to see how they look with a Canadian smile." She hinted around about how she would knock out their teeth, making them look like the hockey players of her native land.

"You ain't gonna lose Gorgeous. Jesse built your engine," Leon reminded.

"I'm glad you have such faith in my car. You run him then!"

"I know that I've started to learn that your family ain't all that fast when it comes to the actual blacktop," Leon started, smirking at Jesse and Tempest in turn. "But maybe you could change our opinion on that if you manage to move a car faster than ninety mile an hour."

Leon's teasing coaxed a reluctant chuckle out of her. "Ok, since it's someone else's dollar if I lose, I'll give it a shot."

"That's my girl," Leon said, squeezing her before pushing her toward her car. "Get a move on."

She simply flipped him off before sliding into the driver's seat and backing the car around to pull out of the alley. Jesse darted off to the Jetta, wanting to be at the finish when the race ended. Dom and Letty were no where to be found and Mia was driving to the starting line with some of her friends from Hector's scene.

"So," Vince drawled, heading over to the Maxima to help line the race route.

"So what?" Leon asked as he got into the passenger seat of Vince's car. He knew the conversation was just starting, and that it would be easier on his head if he just got in and let it take its natural course right away.

"What's up with you'n her anyway?"

"Nothin' dawg," Leon insisted. "I told you from the first that I don't see her like that. She's like a sister to Jess and I ain't never gonna wanna go there with a girl that close to the kid. Not to mention she's not the kinda girl for us to pass around." Leon didn't beat around the bush. There had been girls in the past that jumped from one basement bed to the other from night to night and none of guys really cared. Those kind of girls were only good for one thing anyway and if it wasn't one of their beds they were in, it'd just be some other guy's anyway.

Vince growled at Leon, despite Leon saying basically the right thing. "You better believe she isn't. And if I ever find out what happened today wasn't a prank, I'll kill you."

Leon laughed. Even knowing laughing at Vince when he was so riled was the height of stupid couldn't stop him. The urge overtook his common sense. He figured he could laugh, or he could get angrier than anyone knew he could get. Laughing was the lesser of the two evils, because he really didn't want to have to fight Vince at races. And contrary to Tempest's constant worry about him getting his ass kicked, he knew he could hold his own. "Dude, she got sick of your shit and dropped you like you was hot." Leon continued despite Vince's outraged growl. It was clear—while he might have been basically dumped for the first time—since he and Tempest technically hadn't been dating, the rest of them weren't supposed to look at it that way. "You got no call to be upset about who she sees or what she does from now on. You better start gettin' the hell over her. 'Cause she's the hell over you, or she will be. She's fed the fuck up."

"There's nothin' to get over. But I'd still be more pissed than you ever seen me if I found out the two of you went behind my back before her and I were finished."

Leon sighed. Vince was jealous, big time. This was serious. Which called for some serious conversation, much as he hated to think about it. "You know," he started. He pushed a breath out through his nose forcefully. Talking about serious things like how they felt almost never went well when one of the conversationalists was Vince. "You know, you could be honest with yourself and with her and admit you're treatin' her bad 'cause you're worried about what you're feelin' for her. It's kinda obvious that you didn't keep it as casual as you wanted and now you're trying to drive her away by being a prick. That you're just trying to make her be the bad guy so you don't have to feel bad about dropping her. If she does the dumping, it's all on her not you and you don't have to admit how much it pissed you off to be seen as an asshole, and you don't have to admit you had feelings for her."

Vince's growl turned to a snarl. "All I feel for her is a desire to fuck her brains out. Don't kid yourself otherwise. And I didn't want her to 'drop me' as you put it. I wanted her to keep on fuckin' me until she went home, and then drop me. I wanted to keep getting what I wanted from her, the sex."

Leon shook his head in disbelief. Vince must really think they were all as thick as he was. "Do tell why you took her out not once, but twice if that's the case. She was givin' it up to you already. You didn't have to treat her like she was special just for the fuckin'. She woulda been smarter to play a little hard to get with a guy like you, but she didn't even do that. So you can't play it off like that dawg. You can't play like you had to charm her into your bed 'cause we all know you didn't. So don't front like that."

Why wouldn't Leon let it go? Couldn't he see that was what he really wanted? Just to let the subject drop. "I mean, I did like her. Do, I mean. As a person, as a friend," Vince scrambled to clarify. "But it's not like I ever thought about makin' things with her about more than two weeks of company and some really hot sex." He couldn't stop the smile that crept over his face. _Really hot sex._

"If it helps you feel better about the situation to compartmentalize things that way, go right ahead. Just don't expect me to buy into the load of horse shit you'll likely manage to sell Dom and the rest of the people around here. And for god's sake, don't tell Jesse you were only nice to T to get in her pants. He'll hit the roof."

"Like I'm scared of Jesse."

"Jesse's like all of our kid brother. Scared of him or not, you shouldn't wanna fuckin' hurt his feelings like it would for him to find out you used his 'baby girl' for some easy sex that you coulda got eight ways to Sunday from easy girls that knew the score."

"It wasn't like that," Vince sighed, parking the car about half way down the race route.

"No?" Leon questioned, starting to get seriously angry. "How was it then?"

"I dunno. Do we have to talk about this?"

"No, we don't," Leon said, shrugging. Leave it to Vince to take the easy way out and just force the dropping of the subject. There was no easier way to ensure he never had to talk about anything the least bit difficult for him. Rather than answer to his actions and words, he could just insist he didn't want to talk about it. What a wonderful way to get out of his share of the responsibility for the issues in his life. Leon wasn't quite ready to let it go that easily this time. "I guess I'm just puzzled why it is you say you'd kill me if I was really interested in her, when you're not and apparently never will be. She don't deserve to be happy with a guy who'll treat her right and want _her_, not good sex with some conveniently handy chick? She shouldn't have the chance to be happy with a guy like me, a guy that'd see her for what she is and treat her like the lady she ain't but still deserves to be thought of as?"

Thinking about the answer to Leon's question made other uncomfortable thoughts come to the forefront of his mind. If she was just another girl he had slept with, why _couldn't_ Leon get with her next if he was so inclined? The fact their girls all ran from bed to bed had never been a problem in the past. _Those girls were never your friend as well as the girl you were sleeping with_, _genius_, he answered his own question using her insults for him against himself. He shook his head with a rueful smile. Maybe he was going crazy. "Listen," he sighed. "If this ever goes any farther than this car, I will kill you and that's a promise." He shook his head, unable to believe he was about to admit what he was about to admit, even just to Leon. "I do like her. But I don't know just how much and I'm not willing to make it more permanent or serious than I did already as far as she knows, ok? I don't know what I want and I do know that wanting more than two weeks of fun with a girl who's not going to be here after the two weeks, and won't move down here for at least another two years when she's done of her licence hours isn't smart. So no matter what she wants, or what I want, we can't have it anyway." He lifted one shoulder sanguinely. "So what difference does it make?"

"I think you shoulda told her that, instead of throwing how you feel about Mia at her fifty thousand times. When you're sleepin' with a girl repeatedly isn't the most appropriate time to mention how you feel about another girl over and over again. You coulda did a better job of hiding it until she went home. She already knew, you didn't have to throw it in her face to remind her every second breath."

Vince was saved from finding an answer by the beeping of the Nextel on Leon's belt. Leon snatched up the phone and barked into it.

"What is it?"

"Shit Leon, don't take my head off," Jesse said. "You ok?"

"Fine Jesse. Sorry, I was just busy is all. What is it?"

"They're about to start the race. We clear?"

"Yeah, I got nothin' on the scanners. Should be good."

"I don't want anything to happen to my cousin."

"She has raced before Jess. She'll be fine. The race is a go. It's all good."

"Ok, I'll let Hector know."

Leon snagged his phone back on his belt and let silence reign in the car. He had nothing else to say on the subject, and it seemed Vince didn't either. It was too late now to say 'I told you so'. The damage was done. But Vince was too stubborn not to be fine with the status quo by the next day and Leon knew that Tempest was a fighter. There was a hardness in her eyes she did a good job of hiding most of the time, but it showed she'd been down and out before. But she was still alive and kicking and this situation wouldn't be any different than the tough times she'd faced down and survived before.


	29. Of Racing Problems and Drinking Teams

**AN: **Try not to be too hard on poor V. He might be falling for a girl who has said repeatedly that she will not be sticking around. Which means, not even for him. So not only is he confused about what he wants and feels, he's also got to be secretly wondering what's wrong with him that he's not enough to make her change her mind about sticking around. I mean, he's Vince. He's not the best at dealing with his feelings and he really doesn't want anyone to find out that he might just miss her when she leaves, or that he might just wish she wouldn't leave at all. Plus there's the whole fact he's got himself convinced that Mia is really the only woman for him and it makes him feel confused and guilty that he might just be liking another girl instead, or even both of them at the same time. Temp's not part of his master plan for his life. Mia is. And he's just not sure how to deal with how he feels about any of it. So while he is kind of being a jerk, he might just have his reasons. Try to remember that the characters are all younger than they were in the movie. So he's only 22. That's not very old for a guy. They mature pretty slowly ;)But people, the summary says it all. Two weeks of one summer is all she's got. So you'll just have to wonder what I have up my sleeve for 'book two' which is in the planning stages as we speak because I'm almost done writing this one. Not even close to done posting it, but almost done writing it. So anyway, keep reviewing, keep enjoying (hopefully) and I'll keep posting on a semiregular schedule. Besides, it's the sexual tension of them being so good together and failing to see that themselves that keeps the story interesting. If they just fell in love and made babies after a few chapters everyone would be like 'yawn yeah yeah yeah they're happy. So what?' LOL. Ciao, Tempest.

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Twenty Nine – **Of Racing Problems and Drinking Teams**

The very girl who seemed to be at the center of so many conversations, despite being oblivious to it all, was sitting in her idling Skyline at the starting line of the race she was about to run. She rolled her head back on her neck from side to side, listening to the cracks from her stiff joints. It was hard to relax when you were about to run a race in an untried car on unfamiliar streets when someone else had put you up to it, and didn't even have the courtesy to let you know who they were before they paid your way in. Especially when on more than one occasion you'd had a first hand chance to see that the people of the society you were now in took the activity far more seriously than you had ever done before in your life. She had never sat in an idling beast of a car waiting for someone to drop their arm and set her off racing down a public road against three other people. She'd raced one other car from stoplights, and she'd spent time waiting for the Christmas tree to hit green at the drag strip on more than one occasion, but this was the first time she'd ever waited for a skank to start a race on a street before. She couldn't help but allow her mind to wander back over who might have given up two thousand dollars of their own money to watch her potentially fall on her face.

In her mind it all came back to Dominic. Who else had something to gain from spending a couple grand to see her lose? Nothing would give him as much pleasure as watching her stumble in front of her cousin and new friends, watching her bomb at something she was supposed to be good at. _I am good at this, god damn it! _Sure, she didn't know squat about any of the people she was racing, and didn't know how her car was going to handle or drive up over a hundred miles an hour—at least, not anymore—but she was a good racer. Well, good at what she did at home. She could run from behind, behind people who out carred her at that, and still end up on top. She knew she was a physical embodiment for how the old adage 'it ain't the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog' was true. She might be smaller than the guys, she might not have their strength, but when it came down to it she had something more important. Sheer stubborn will not to lose and a competitive drive that wouldn't quit.

On that thought, she revved up her engine and listened to it pop as raw fuel burned in the exhaust and caused an afterburn of sorts as it exited from her engine through straight pipes. Of course, that was another slight advantage she had over her competition. Where she lived, she had no yearly smog checks and no roadside spot checks either. So she didn't have to worry about her emissions equipment staying put and doing it's job. So her catalytic converters were mere hollow shells of their former selves. The mechanic, when doing her yearly safety check, would see they were still there. He—or she, she amended in her head—would never know there was no honeycomb of platinum and other catalysts inside the metal casings. As it revved up and fell off, the car vibrated under her with a barely controlled sort of power that thrilled her. Always had and always would. All that stood between her and about eight or nine hundred carefully tuned and racing horses was a racing clutch disk. It was sobering, yet very thrilling. All that power was under her foot. She had the control. She could do as she pleased with all those galloping horses. She watched a barely dressed chick walk out onto the road a few metres in front of the line and raise her arms high in the air.

She pushed the clutch in, engaged first, and revved the car up to just over four thousand RPM, letting off on the clutch just enough for the duel between clutch and throttle to hold the car still on the line, snarling about being held still at such high revolutions while ready to run. She laughed. "Just wait until we launch from four grand and they all sit there spinnin' their tires, baby," she crooned to the car. It was a huge advantage for her to have all wheel drive. It allowed her to launch from a rev line that rear and front wheel drive cars couldn't match. And if they tried, they would do just as she imagined in her mind; sit on the line and smoke the tires. If they didn't fishtail right out of the race.

As it always did, the thoughts of the coming race, now that it was so near, made her nervous. But in a good way. Her breathing accelerated and she got the familiar sensation of butterflies in her stomach. She felt the skin of her face flush as heat skittered along her nerves, radiating out from her solar plexus to terminate in her limbs. Her arms and legs felt heavy with latent adrenaline. That would go away the second her gas foot passed clutch on its way down and she knew it. She felt hazy right now, while she waited for the light to go green, such as it was, but she'd be all business when the time called for it, and she knew it. Until afterward, when the effects of the adrenaline on her blood would make her wish she hadn't just dropped her only chance to go work it off with some sex wild and rough enough to rival the wildness of the ride she was about to take down the stretch of Glendale they had blocked off.

She licked her dry lips, waiting for the girl to drop her arms and start the race. She might be the rookie, and she might be the girl, but she wasn't loosing. It wasn't an option. Failure wasn't an option. It was one thing she would not accept for herself ever again. If she didn't come in first, fine. But it wouldn't be because she didn't give it one hundred and ten percent of her effort. Not ever again. She'd heard it time and time before, but now she took it to heart. If something was worth doing in the first place, it was worth doing to your full ability. No matter what it was.

_Va grande o va a casa, Angelo_. The words of an old friend echoed in her head. A very dear, old friend who was the reason why she spoke Italian almost as well as English. Angelo—angel—his term of endearment for her. It was funny and ironic all at once, he always imparted, uncaring that he was repeating himself over and over again, because an angel was the last thing she was. _Go big or go the fuck home, Angel_. And so she would now because she always did.

The girl bisecting the four cars on the tarmac shared a look with Hector, and at Hector's almost unperceivable nod, dropped her arms. Four cars squealed off the line in unison. A red 200sx lurched to the left as it got underway, and immediately slipped behind the other three straining vehicles. Tempest had to wonder what the heck he'd been thinking in the first place, getting into a race against her Skyline in a 200sx. She reminded herself sanguinely that because he had, she would definitely be spared from coming in dead last, no matter what else happened.

A silver Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder with an elaborate decal of vines around the Mitsubishi logo on the doors took the lead just off the line. A black Civic Del Sol ended up just behind Tempest and off to her left, a simple yellow strip running from one front wheel well to the other across the hood it's only ornamentation. She was in second, sitting just behind the Spyder. She had the guy in the Mitsu for the first half second, but he caught her right off the line and took the lead. He was only half a car in front of her and she wasn't really worried.

Her syncros clinked as she shifted from second to third. There was a fluid grace to the movement, her short throw shifter making sure the required gear change was made with a minimum of effort being expended. She gained on the Spyder. A quick glance to her left showed the Del Sol had gained fractionally on her as well. "Got an C5 under that hood, don'tcha boy?" she asked out loud, obviously rhetorically. No way was a Honda 1.6 keeping up with her and the Spyder for even as long as he'd managed. He had to have something way better than the stock engine under that hood. She was willing to put money on the Del Sol having a B18C5 Acura engine. There were a multitude of options the Civic owner could have used, but the C5 was the one she would use herself. _Well, if I was ever caught dead driving a Honda_, she mused to herself with a smirk.

Her shift from third to forth made it irrelevant as she pulled away from him like a freight train. She put her nose out front of the silver Mitsubishi while she was on a roll. "This all you got?" She tossed the car into fifth on that note and floored it. She felt her nitrous kick in, felt her car fly ahead. At that point everything looked like she was seeing it from a slip stream warp speed drive. She knew the Spyder had to be close by, but she had no time to glance over to see how close he was, not if she wanted to make keeping her car on the road and going straight down it her priority. She streaked over the spray painted finish line going one thirty five in fifth, listening to her car roar someplace very close to its eight grand red line.

By the time she got stopped and turned around, Jesse was right there waiting for her. "How's it feel to win your first race out in a place like L.A. cuz?" he asked, grinning like a mad man.

"Like it's only what I deserve," she answered, smirking arrogantly. It wouldn't do for anyone to know she'd had her doubts if she could win before she started to race, and had similar doubts if she _had_ won once she'd finished. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, she'd always known what the outcome would be. _Take that, asshole!_ she said in her mind, picturing Dom standing in front of her so she could rub it in to him that she hadn't lost.

"Well, you _are_ my cousin, driving a Skyline that me'n Leon built, and staying in Dom's house, so I'd say that's a fair assessment of the situation," Jesse said, still unable to wipe the smile off his face.

"I don't think you and Leon built my car without assistance."

"Ok, you built it and we helped."

"Better." She grinned at her cousin, throwing an arm around his neck and squeezing.

"Let's get back to the warehouse and get your money, cuz."

"I really like the sound of that." She couldn't keep the grin off her face at the thought of getting eight thousand dollars, none of which had ever been hers. "I just wish I knew who bought me in so I could rub it in."

"Rub what in?" Jesse asked, clearly confused.

"Rub in the fact I didn't lose, duh." She shook her head, eyebrows knit together over her nose and arched at the outside corners. Didn't Jesse see that the whole thing had been a setup to see her fail?

"Why do you think you were meant to lose?"

"I dunno really. I just assumed the whole thing was a set up by Dom to watch me crash and burn so he could rub it in how I wasn't good at racing."

"That's one way to see it I guess," Jesse admitted. He really hadn't thought of that angle. It could be true, he figured. "I just assumed Vince did it as his own, twisted way of saying sorry without saying sorry."

"Didn't Leon tell you I told Vince I didn't want another thing to do with him back at the first of the night?"

"No! You did what?"

"I told Vince that I didn't want anything else to do with him." She shrugged to show she didn't understand why this was such a shocking concept to Jesse.

"And he was ok with that?"

"No, he was pissed the fuck off. But what was he really gonna do about it?" She didn't give Jesse time to answer her question. "But due to how well that whole situation didn't go, I somehow doubt very much that Vince had anything to do with getting me into that race."

"Why'd you decide to give him his walking papers anyway?"

She shrugged. "Just had enough of his shit I suppose."

"I guess I saw this day comin' anyway. The two of you couldn't be civil to each other for more than ten minutes in a row."

"True." _Well, not with all our clothes on, at any rate_. But she didn't figure Jesse wanted or needed to hear that. "We goin' back to the alley or what? I wanna go to Hector's party at some point in time, and I guess, due to my nameless, faceless benefactor, I'm buyin' tonight."

"Yes! We'll have to get someone to drop us off at the club so we can all drink as much as we want."

"Will Mia really drink?"

"Not likely, and if she does it'll only be one or two girlie cocktail drinks, so she'll likely be ok with takin' her car. Let's go already."

"Ok, ok. Shit."

They drove back to the alley and Tempest got her money. Shortly thereafter the cry of 'cops!' was heard, indicating the imminent arrival of law enforcement. They all tore away from the alley and the whole team arrived back at the fort without incident. Jesse, Leon and Tempest all left again right away in Mia's car, with Mia driving. Letty and Dominic headed out to a different party and Vince seemed to decide to go with them. At the very least, he didn't head to Hector's with the rest of his team, and he never liked to stay at home alone.

They rolled up on Hector's club in Mia's Acura a short time later. The club wasn't large. It was in a squat, square building painted with blue and orange squares all over. The name was proclaimed on a large, blue neon sign out front, the image of a glowing blue cat reigning over the words arranged vertically on the sign. There wasn't much to see in the front, but as Mia pulled the car around to the rear, it was clear to see why. Everything happened around the back, in the parking lot. The lot was full of tricked out cars and people.

Tempest really had to think there were more people outside than in. The lot was teeming with cars and humanity. She saw Hector in the center of the lot with a girl under each arm. She also noticed that odds were good they were going to be the only group of people around the entire place who weren't Hispanic in decent. There were a few people scattered around that were black and Caucasian, but they were the definite minority.

Mia parked and they walked up to Hector. "Glad to see you made it," he told their group with a big smile. "Make yourselves at home. Drinks in the club, dancing in there and out here. Feel free to check out the rides, have a drink, whatever you want."

"Thanks man," Jesse answered before turning to his cousin. "Wanna go get a drink?"

"You're just anxious to start drinkin' before I change my mind about it bein' my treat."

"I'm always anxious to start drinkin'. It doesn't have to be someone else's treat. It's Saturday night cuz! Let's get drunk!"

She laughed at his insistent exclamation. "I guess I can't argue with that. Let's get drunk."

They went into the club and walked up to the bar. There were a few people inside too. Enough that the place looked quite happening, not at all deserted. "Why don't you guys go get a table?" Tempest asked the rest of the people with her.

"Sure thing," Leon answered, leading Mia and Jesse over to a booth in a corner. Tempest walked up to the bar and leaned onto the polished surface on her elbows.

"Get you something?" the very hot, very Latin bartender asked her almost right away.

"Yeah," she answered, smirking with her eyebrow cocked. She could think of several things he could get her, and none of them were alcoholic right off the top of her head. Deciding that she really didn't want to go there so early in the evening, she decided to just order some drinks for the time being. She quickly counted herself and those with her, coming up with four people. "I want four shots of tequila, two Corona, one double gin and orange with a splash of grenadine, and one Long Island Ice Tea."

"You gonna drink all that yourself?"

"No. Well, not all at once," she amended with a smile. "By the end of the night, it's anyone's guess what I'll be doin'."

He started to make her mixed drinks and pour her shots, grinning at her words. "You're not from around here?"

"No," she cocked her hip to the side and wrinkled her nose. "Is it that obvious?"

"Just in your accent. What're you doing down in California, let alone in Hector's bar?"

"Well, my cousin lives down here with Dominic Toretto, so I guess that answers both your questions. I'm stayin' with the team and we were racin' tonight."

"Ah, you musta did ok if you're buying."

"Yeah, I did a'ight." She grinned saucily. _Are you flirting with the Latino bartender? Are you _crazy"So, you work for Hector full time?"

"No. During the day I'm a personal trainer in a gym. I do this for fun and some extra money on the side. Meeting hot chicks is just a fringe benefit," he said, smiling as he put all her drinks but her two beer on a tray for her. "You want glasses for the beer?"

"God no. They'll swill them right out of the bottle before they so much as hit the table top."

He popped the top off the beers, set them on the tray and took the money for her order. She left him a generous tip and headed back to the table. She set a shot in front of each of their places before setting a beer in front of each Leon and Jesse, and the Ice Tea in front of Mia. "I'll hear no arguments about doin' the shot. I won, I get to pick the first drink, we're each doing a tequila shot." Mia opened her mouth to protest. "Yes, that means you too Mia. One won't kill you and you're gonna be here for hours before you have to drive us home."

Mia shook her head with a grin. She felt like she had an evil devil on one shoulder and its twin on her other one. It was anyone's guess where the good one had gone, or who had done what to her. She was likely tied up in the back of some dirty, dank warehouse waiting for a rescue that would never occur. They each picked up their shot. "To friends and family," Jesse said and with a nod, they all agreed and shot their tequila.

"Oh my god, that burns," Mia gasped, her eyes watering.

"Just a little," Jesse answered.

Leon laughed. "Only if you're a sissy."

"True that," Tempest agreed. "It was so good _I_ want another."

"I wouldn't argue with another one," Jesse interjected. "But that doesn't change the fact that it burned on the way down."

"It slid down as smooth as silk. You're just not much of a drinker." Tempest smirked. "We gonna add anything else to the list of things I do better'n you while I'm down here?"

"Oh, anything is possible," Jesse answered with a smile.

Mia took a sip of her much tamer mixed drink and looked around the room. "We should finish our drinks up and go mix outside for awhile. That's where everyone is anyway."

"Won't get an argument outta me," Tempest answered and promptly downed the rest of her bright orange drink. "There were some nice cars out there and I wouldn't mind takin' a closer look."

Jesse and Leon finished their beers quickly and Mia elected to carry her drink outside with her, citing the fact that if anyone cared about liquor laws, she and Tempest wouldn't even have been served in the first place as her reason for thinking it was ok to take open liquor out of the bar and into the public. In the end she was right. Half the people standing around the lot had beers in their hands.

When Hector saw them outside he walked over to them, shaking the hands of Jesse and Leon in that manly way that guys so often did. He pointed out some people and rides of interest to them.

They wandered around for half an hour, checking out cars and meeting people. After that they headed back into the club and got some more drinks. Some of the girls they had met since arriving came in and sat with them, much to the delight of Jesse and Leon. Some of them got up to dance and Mia elected to go with them as they were friends of hers from around racing and around school.

Tempest reclined into the booth, declining to get up and dance just yet. She felt like she had a few more drinks to get down before she'd be feeling relaxed enough to get up and dance. She was still wound too tight from her 'incident' with Vince and her race. She was more laid back than she had been, but still not back to normal and she knew it. But she figured a few more drinks in her system would take good care of it. She looked up to scan the room just as Jesse returned to the table. Since she hadn't even been aware he was gone, his return caused her head to cock to the side in question. As if to answer it, he replaced her empty glass with a shot of tequila and another gin and juice.

"More tequila? You're not supposed to try and get me loaded. You have nothing to gain from it," Tempest teased.

"Sure I do. I might get to see you make a fool of yourself in front of all these people." Jesse grinned. Tempest had made the mistake of telling him about the time she got drunk off tequila and what she had done. Tequila was one liquor she couldn't hold her own with. She didn't know why. Everyone told her it was because Tequila had an extra kick to it, like it had a drug in it. She knew that was a myth, but she didn't know why she could handle any liquor in large quantities but tequila. It made her drunker than drunk, and the next day it would make her sicker than sick. With a shrug she tossed the shot back, and listened to Jesse cheer. Drunker than drunk sounded like a plan. She's worry about sicker than sick tomorrow.

By the time she got finished with her drinks, those already in front of her and those that Jesse kept appearing on the table as well, Vince and his drama was finally the last thing on her mind. When Mia came and grabbed her by the forearm to haul her up onto the dance floor, she finally went without a protest. She was hauled into the middle of a group of gyrating girls and felt into step, slinking and sliding in time with the rest of Mia's friends. After several songs, she was just getting into the tempo of the night and starting to feel very at home in Hector's bar. She hit the floor in front of one of her new friends before sliding back up in a undulating motion and dropping down again. Many of the other girls were doing similar movements.

There was a group of about five poles spanning from floor to ceiling at the front of the dance floor, all surrounded by mirrors and lit by multicoloured, flashing lights. Some of Mia's friends went up onto the dais and started doing dancing tricks with the poles. They attempted to get Mia and Tempest up to join them, but both demurred, fighting the grips of the other girls off to get away, laughing frantically about how there was no way they were dancing like strippers in front of a bunch of strangers, let alone Jesse and Leon.

"Suit yourself," one of the girls replied with a shrug.

Tempest elected to go back to the table to have few more drinks, and she threw herself into the booth beside Jesse with a laugh.

"You havin' a good time there, Gorgeous?" Leon asked, chuckling.

"Yeah, but I need another drink. Be right back." She got up again and headed to the bar. The same hot, dark bartender from before walked up to help her right away.

"What can I get you?"

"A shot of tequila, make it a double, and a double gin and orange."

"You reached the point where it's all for you yet?"

"Oh hell yeah. That place's a distant spot in the rearview at this point." She grinned. "I'ma pay for it tomorrow no matter what I drink now, so I might as well go all out. It's kinda a motto of mine. Go big or go home."

"I'd say you went big enough to stay where ever the hell you wanna," he laughed.

"Yeah, I know you're right," she answered, laughing back. She tossed down her shot. "Why don't you fill that up again, and gimme two Corona too?"

"You're the boss." He started to get her drinks. "So, you gonna be out there on the floor again at any point? You're pretty good."

"Thanks, and of course I'm gonna be out on the floor again. I don't come to a place like this to sit around on my ass. That's what I brought Leon and Jesse for."

"Which one's your cousin?"

"Jess. Leon's my husband, soon to be ex." She grinned.

"'Cuse me?" the bartender asked, a look of incredulousness on his face.

"We pretended to get married this afternoon to play a little joke on Dom and the rest of his friends. That's what's up with the white outfit."

"You sound like one crazy chica."

"That'd be one word for me, I guess. I better get back to Jesse and Leon."

"See you around."

She headed back toward the booth her friends were still holding down, carrying her tray of drinks. She set the tray down. "Ok, drink up."

"Thanks cuz," Jesse said, picking up his drink as he wrapped an arm around Tempest's shoulders and kissed her cheek. He looked into her eyes. "You are so loaded right now."

"It's about to get even better." Tempest shot down the second double tequila before picking up her gin.

"So this is where you guys got to," a voice broke in from beside the table. They all looked up to find Dom and Letty standing beside their table. "What are you guys up to?" Letty asked.

"You're lookin' at it," Leon answered, holding up his beer.

"How fuckin' drunk are you guys?" Dom asked.

"Pretty drunk," Jesse answered.

"It's ok though," Tempest said, looking up at Dom and trying to keep a grin off her face. "It's what we do. We're a drinking team with a racing problem."

The three of them cracked up laughing. Letty joined them, and even Dom couldn't keep the smile off his face. _Drinking team with a racing problem indeed_. Her win had been delivered neatly; a pretty victory. It was more than he had figured her capable of. He didn't put too much stock in the kind of racing education she would have been able to obtain living where she lived. Who would have taught her how to race well? The cows? She was from the middle of no where. She'd only ended up with such a great car as a by-product of being from no where, of course. But still, in his mind it wasn't like there were likely to be a lot of great racers just hanging out waiting to teach her to shift and launch either. Of course, he had yet to figure out how she had gotten in the race. He had her figured for almost out of money. Where she had gotten the two grand to buy in from he didn't know.

"Let's go dance some more," Mia broke in, addressing Tempest.

"Yeah, ok." Tempest allowed herself to be hauled out of the booth and out onto the dance floor into the middle of Mia's friends. Even if she hadn't wanted to get up and hit it some more, she would have anyway for an excuse to get away from Dom's presence. Letty allowed herself to be dragged out with them. The found the beat and started to dance, the three of them in the middle of a group of other girls that Mia and Tempest had been hanging out with all night.


	30. Of Choices and Dripping Sin

**AN: This chapter is fairly long. It's also, um, perhaps controversial. Also, it's been prepared on my desktop computer which I never use and hate, so you'll have to forgive me for any errors made and not fixed. I have no word processor with a spell checker yet. And I miss my laptop already :( So anyway, reward me for updating without my laptop and making it a nice long chapter. :) The comments I've gotten have made me realize things that I didn't explain well and some parts of the story have already been changed because of it, so keep it coming. **

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By - _TempestRaces_

Chapter Thirty - **Of Choices and Dripping Sin  
**

Vince wandered around the parking lot of Hector's club, making the rounds talking to people he knew outside. And avoiding going inside the building proper. He was putting off bumping into Tempest. Literally, he figured, because he felt like they were very likely to bump heads and lock horns if they met up after what had been said at races. He knew he was still pissed off, and he couldn't imagine she was over anything either.

He'd love to be able to tell anyone who asked that he'd enjoyed going to Edwin's after party with Dom and Letty, but he couldn't. Not if he was going to be honest at the same time. His best attempts to allow himself to simply pick up a girl for the night and take her someplace reasonably out of the direct path of traffic to get it done hadn't amounted to more than angry self admonishments that that was exactly what he should do. What he had done was drink too much and look very pissed off with the world instead. A fact that both Dom and Letty had gone out of their way to point out at regular intervals.

So now here he was, stranded by his drunken condition where there was no place else he'd like to be less. He liked Hector, and often had a good time when invited to the other racer's club. But not when he was ripping for a fight that would preferably take place with someone who was herself likely present and loaded enough to make a fight between the two of them very, well, tempestuous. And, as he'd already decided that fighting with Miss Trouble again was out, that left the first male who looked at him sideways open for the ass-kicking he couldn't deliver to her ass. _Don't think about her ass! _he admonished himself. But Mia's car was most definitely still parked around the back of the club, and that meant that the second half of his team was all still present and accounted for.

With a shrug he decided he couldn't fill the whole stay at Hector's in the parking lot. Sooner or later he was going to have to go in and see what Dom and Letty were doing. With a sigh he headed to the door and pushed it open. The interior was darker than the night outside and his eyes didn't adjust to the dim lighting right away. It took him a moment to find his friends. The male portion of the team was sitting together in a back wall booth. The women were no where to be seen. He strode over to where Leon, Jesse and Dominic were sitting together, drinking Corona.

"Hey Dawg, how's it goin'?" Leon asked Vince when he had made his way over to the side of the table.

"It's goin'." Vince's answer was surly and delivered with a frown.

"Didn't enjoy Edwin's as much as Dom and Letty?" Jesse asked.

"I guess you could say that."

"You gonna sit down with us, or stand there and glower all night long?" Dom asked. He had a funny feeling he knew where things with Vince were headed. Straight to hell in a handbag. A handbag belonging to a certain Canadian chick who was presently doing a dance with his sister and girlfriend guaranteed to send Vince into a tailspin. A loud, violent tailspin, complete with yelling, cursing and perhaps even physical violence, if he looked up to see it.

"I dunno how long I wanna stay here brotha. It's gettin' late."

"You aren't in any better shape to drive than me'n Jess," Leon said.

"Well, no shit," Vince growled. "Dom's the one who's on sucker duty tonight, and I'm tellin' him I wanna go home. Soon."

"Damn, someone's in a bad mood." Jesse stood up. "I'm gonna go get another beer. Anyone want anything?"

Everyone declined and Jesse wandered off.

"What'd you do wit' the girls?" Vince asked Dom and Leon.

"They're all dancing with a bunch of Mia's friends," Dom said. "I gather they actually got Mia tipsy earlier."

Leon grinned. "Yeah, watchin' her shoot that tequila did my heart good."

"Tequila?" Vince asked.

"Yeah, Temp wouldn't take no for an answer. Mia told me later she felt like she had a little devil on both her shoulders, and she had serious concerns for what happened to the good one, but that she was likely tied up in the back room of some dark, abandoned warehouse someplace."

Even Vince couldn't prevent the laugh that escaped him. He didn't call her 'trouble' for nothing. He scanned the crowd, looking for her when Leon brought thoughts of her to the forefront of his mind. He couldn't pick her out right away. He found that strange, given she was still dressed from head to toe in white, and was one of only about three white girls in the whole place. As he was looking over the mostly female, dancing crowd, three girls took to the poles at the front of the stage. They were trying to get someone else to join them, and weren't having much luck.

At first, that was. When the succeeded to drag their victim into their midst, Vince wished very much they hadn't. They had just pulled a laughing Tempest _and_ Letty up onto the stage to take the two extra poles.

"I got no clue how to do this," Tempest told her new, Latina friend. The only reason she had for even being willing to get up on the stage and attempt pole dancing for the first time was her extremely drunken state. That, and the fact that Letty was willing to try too. The fact Dom and Letty had shown up without Vince helped too. No way would she have ever decided to swing around a pole for the first time in front of him.

"I'll show you," the girl who had dragged her on stage answered. Her name was Karli and she was easily as drunk as Tempest, which was to say she was loaded for bear. Earlier in the evening Karli had confided that she was a part time stripper-though she preferred the term exotic dancer-to make money to pay for college. Good money, at that.

"Ok, but I'm too drunk to be graceful or co-ordinated." She felt like she was twice as likely to fall flat on her ass as manage to do any kind of graceful movement.

"Just watch." With a motion to the DJ, the girl had him spinning 'Pour Some Sugar on Me' by Def Leppard. "Ok, take the pole in the crook of your arm, like this," she illustrated her point by doing as she was explaining, "and walk around the pole, slow and sexy, like this."

Tempest watched for a second before copying the motion. She saw Letty doing the same out of the corner of her eye. When they looked at each other they cracked up laughing at what they were doing. Neither could believe they were on a stage parading around trying to look sexy with a stripper pole.

Tempest watched as the next thing her instructor did was stood behind the pole, grabbed it at chest level and leaned back, pressing her lower body into the pole as she arched her back over, head going toward the floor. She copied her again, still trying not to crack up laughing at the embarrassed absurdity of it all. The third move they did as a group was to stand in front of the pole and slide down to the ground, still holding the pole with a hand over their heads. As they started to get more athletic, the sense of absurdity started to fade, being pushed out by the all out concentration needed not to fall flat on one's ass on the stage.

"See, you're pretty good."

"You haven't done anything tricky yet," Tempest roared back over the music.

"Ok, you want tricky, try this!" Karli grabbed the pole up high over her head and with a little jump up, wrapped one leg around it, sticking the other out straight. She used her upper body to execute a spin around in a three sixty around the brass pole. "Try that."

"Here goes nothing," Tempest answered, laughing. She grabbed and jumped, managing the spin only a little shakily.

"See, it's not so hard. Now, slide down, and end up in the splits if you can do 'em." Karli illustrated her instructions by doing what she wanted her 'student' to do.

Lower lip caught between her teeth in concentration, Tempest copied the move, ending up on stage in the splits. She followed the given instructions to haul herself back up to standing using the pole as the song changed to 'Living Dead Girl' by Rob Zombie. Tempest couldn't help the laugh that overtook her. She was learning to pole dance to music from an album titled 'American Made Music to Strip By.' Instead of feeling foolish as she had expected she would-and had started out feeling, for that matter-she felt very sexy. It wasn't like she was _actually_ stripping, after all. She was just dancing with an accessory. The only thing that would have made the whole thing better for her would have been if Vince had been there.

She knew it wasn't well done of her, but a large part of her wanted to rub his nose in the fact that had he just been a bit smarter, she would still be acting like she was his. Thinking how pissed off he would be with himself over it all if he could see her was like salve to her abused ego. But because he wasn't smart, they were done and she was free to go home and perfect her stripping technique with anyone she might chose. Then Karli showed her another spin, one where she ended up hanging upside down using the grip of her thighs up high on the pole to remain in position and the only thought she had left was of not falling off the pole onto her head.

After a few more very athletic moves involving her sweaty body and a brass pole, not to mention spinning around said pole and sometimes so fast she felt like she must be a blur, she decided that she'd had enough 'fun' for one evening. "I gotta get outta these lights and get a glass of something cold," she told Letty.

"I hear that. Let's go for a drink and a walk."

With a nod, Tempest agreed and the two climbed down off the stage and headed for the bar.

"Is that what I think it is?" Dom asked Vince as he watched his girlfriend and her friend being hauled up on the stage. The stage where the stripper poles were.

"If you think Letty and Tempest just got up on the stage where there are poles for stripping, than sure, that's what you think it is," Vince growled.

"Do you think they're gonna strip? I really didn't think Letty was that drunk," Dom said.

He sounded genuinely curious, and almost intrigued, Vince thought. He was ok with the fact Letty might be considering taking all her clothes off in front of a room full of strange, drunk men? "I wouldn't put it past either one of 'em. But the first piece of either of their clothes that comes off, I'm gonna go up there and haul her out over my shoulder. I don't wanna see either one of them stripping in here. I mean, I don't ever wanna see Lett without all her clothes on."

As the girls started to dance, each of them fell silent, each lost in different thoughts.

_Blood on her skin, dripping with sin. Living dead girl._

The lyrics of the song summarized how he felt about 'Trouble' neatly. The way she was able to move her body fully clothed and make him think of things he wanted her to be doing without any at all was staggeringly easy. It was like she was dripping sinful thoughts straight into his mind when she moved.

When the girls finally got off the stage, Vince allowed himself a sigh of relief. All their clothes had stayed where they belonged. He watched them head to the bar for drinks before they started to walk the perimeter of the room, drinks in hand. Mia found them about half way around the room, laughing at them for what they'd done.

They took it good naturedly, laughing together before allowing Mia to drag them out onto the dance floor again. Much as he tried to stop himself, he couldn't stop watching them dance together. Couldn't stop himself from comparing the movements of one girl to the other. Mia danced well. Likely even as well as Tempest. But there was an added element of _something_ to the way Tempest moved. A layer of bad girl who knew she was bad and knew what she was doing to the people watching her. But it was just a shimmering element to her. It didn't completely mask the good girl inside. And she managed to do it all without even half as much self-consciousness as the darker girl. The way she slunk back into the girl behind her, a girl she hardly knew at that, and moved in unison with her was like liquid sex, right there on the dance floor. He knew he'd never, ever, see Mia dancing all over another girl like that. It wouldn't matter if the other girl was Letty. Mia just didn't have it in her to go that far.

He wasn't sure what he was thinking. He wasn't sure if he was more intrigued by the total innocence of Mia's movements, or the purposefully enticing movements of the curly haired witch he still wanted as much as his next breath of air, no matter what he told himself every few seconds. He moved to get up out of the booth. He wasn't sure what he thought he was going to go do, or where he thought he was going to go, but he had a moment thinking he couldn't sit still for even a moment longer. But then he sat back down with a huff. There was no where things could go between her and him that wouldn't get ugly. He settled back into the seat instead, deciding to watch them dance instead of getting into the fight to end all fights with Tempest in the middle of a crowded bar. Instead he watched her wave her arm in a controlled circle over her head to the beat of 'Cowboy' by Kid Rock.

"I can't dance any longer," Tempest told Letty as soon as the current musical selection ended, starting to slur her words slightly from fatigue and drunkenness. "Too tired."

"I hear that. I feel like I've been on my fuckin' feet all day. Let's go find the boys and get outta here."

"Ok, sounds like heaven. I just gotta go the bathroom before we leave. Never make it home before I need to go."

"Ok. I'll start roundin' up Mia and the rest of the team."

"Meet you back at the booth in five."

Letty waved her understanding of the plan before heading toward where she had left her boyfriend. Tempest headed down the hallway which led to the ladies room, a place she had been repeatedly over the course of the evening.

Letty slid into the booth beside Dom and sat down with a weary sigh. "I'm so wrecked right now. I don't know how I'm still standin'. And I really don't know how T is, 'cause she's so drunk." Letty laughed. "She's straight up hilarious though. Did you see her on the stage?"

"Yeah, I saw her," Dom answered, grinning at his very inebriated girlfriend. "Saw you too. You wanna show me some of those moves again later? Up close?"

"Maybe," Letty said, grinning cheekily.

"Where is T, anyway?" Leon asked.

"She had to go to the bathroom. She's gonna get us here when she's done and we're gonna go home."

Tempest walked down the hall toward the bathroom unsteadily. When she got in the bathroom stall she closed the door and sat down before she could fall down. "Why do you do this sorta thing, girlie?" she asked herself rhetorically as she leaned her head onto her palms and propped her elbows onto her knees. She was so drunk and tired, falling asleep where she sat had a lot of appeal. Only thoughts of conning her way into a soft place to sleep with Leon got her up and mobile once she was finished. There was no way she was sleeping on the couch. Not as miserable as she was going to feel tomorrow morning.

She finished up, washed her hands and let herself out of the bathroom. She could only surmise that both her drunken state and tunnel like focus on getting home and finding a bed made her miss the man standing in the shadows of the men's room door.

Well, she certainly missed him at first. Once he had grabbed her by the tops of her arms and pushed her into the wall, he was hard to continue to miss. "What're you doin?" she asked. She tried to make it sound angry and cocky. She wasn't sure how well she succeeded. But she knew somehow it was important to keep her cool and her confidence.

"You looked like you needed a man while you were dancing out there, little girl. You looked like you needed to find someone with the right equipment to grind on. So I figured I'd step up to the plate to do the job, since it don't seem like none of those guys you showed up with is gonna do it." He fisted a hand in her hair to hold her head steady and lowered his mouth toward hers.

"Get offa me," she answered and began to struggle. "Why is it every man thinks all a woman who isn't interested needs is one demonstration of how 'great' he is in the sack to change her mind? Some girls just don't want dick, asshole." He wasn't holding her in the most careful fashion, and she cursed herself as ten times the fool for getting so inebriated that she wasn't able to take advantage of his uncareful stance. She tried to raise one leg to knee him where it would bring the most effect, but she couldn't keep her balance on one foot. When she tried she shifted sideways and the grip her assailant still had on her hair stung so bad that her eyes started to water. Her pain tolerance wasn't so hot when she was so drunk, she was finding out the hard way.

"Play hard to get, really. I like it like that. I'll still show you in the end."

He was drunk, she realized. She could smell a strong drink on his breath. "Pal, this is going to be something you really regret doing when my friends wonder why it's takin' me so long to take a piss and they come lookin' for me. Just let me go and they don't need to know what you almost did."

"I don't think anyone's comin' lookin' for you or they would have already. But that's ok sweet thing, 'cause I'll show you a good time instead."

His mouth finally landed on hers. She tried to flip her head to the side, but he tightened his grip on her hair so she couldn't move her head at all. She kept her mouth firmly closed and tried to shut her brain off so that she didn't have to feel his free hand starting to wander and his unwelcomed mouth on hers. It wasn't quite that easy, but she just kept focusing on keeping her mouth sealed and telling herself that surely Letty or Leon would realize she'd been gone an uncommonly long time just to use the bathroom. Surely Leon or Jesse would get worried that she'd passed out in the can sooner or later, and come to check on her.

"Gimme some of that sugar, sweet thing," the drunk man crooned against her lips.

"Ain't you figured it yet? There ain't no sugar here for you, you arrogent prick. Get the fuck off'a me before my boyfriend comes down here. He's not the sharin' type." She threw the mention of a boyfriend in on instinct. Maybe if the creep thought he'd get his ass kicked by a jealous boyfriend he'd fuck off.

He pushawed. "If he wasn't much for sharin' and was in the building, than why'd he let you dance like that in front of the whole place all night long, little girl?" He didn't wait for her to answer, but crushed his mouth against hers again instead.

She slowly became aware of his hand moving down her body. Sure, one of her friends should come looking for her sooner or later. But would it be in time to stop him from the plan he was clearly planning to perpetrate against her?

"What the hell is keeping Tempest so long?" Dom asked the group in general. He'd been around drunken party goers sober long enough. He was ready to go home and go to bed. Letty doing a rendition of her pole dance for him in private before they went to sleep optional.

"You know how females are in the bathroom Dom," Jesse answered with a grin.

"As long as we're stuck here waiting for her highness to finish with her throne, I need another beer," Vince told them all with a sneer and got up out of the booth. He stalked up to the bar and ordered his drink gruffly. He was unreasonably pissed off with everything. He was pissed off about what had gone down at races between him and Tempest. He was pissed off about the joke Leon, Jesse and Tempest had perpetuated against him earlier in the evening. He was pissed off about watching her dance like she was having sex with various girls and the odd guy on the dance floor all night. He was just plain pissed off. And now, because of the troublesome female at the center of most of the causes of his anger, he was pissed off again, because she was keeping them waiting when all he wanted to do was go home.

He turned around to face the room, holding his beer around the neck of the bottle as if he was trying to choke the life out of it and leaning back on the bar on his elbows. His tired, annoyed gaze scanned the room, starting over at the main entrance and slowing going around the perimeter. At the end of the visual sweep, directly opposite the main door on the opposite wall was the hallway to the bathroom. He looked down the murky hall and looked back the other way. It registered there was a couple making out down the hallway, but that wasn't uncommon in a club like Hector's.

As he watched his team joke and tease each other in the booth he fumed. Because of her, he couldn't even have a good time. He was too wrapped up in all the anger and all the frustration over how things were between them. Where the hell is that god damn woman? I wanna go home, so isn't it just fuckin' like her to keep me waitin'. He glanced down the hall again. He realized with a start that the girl making out with the guy down the bathroom hall was dressed from head to toe in white, and had a pair of mile high flip flop shoes on her feet.

Almost in a daze, he started across the room toward the dim passage. He had to get a closer look to prove to himself that on the same night she'd dropped him, she had decided to make out with another guy. He had planned to stop at the mouth of the hall, once he had managed to confirm to himself that it was her leaned back against the wall. And he did pause there for a moment. That was when he got really angry. So she was too good for a casual relationship with him, but not for some loser that she had just met in a bar? She wasn't too good to allow some stranger to kiss her. To slide his hand down the top of her pants in the hallway of some second class bar. Where did she get off?

He started to walk down the hallway, stopping only when he was right beside the pair. "What the fuck are you doin'?" When he growled his question, the man who had been kissing Tempest looked up in shock, as though the question had been directed at him, and not the fickle bitch he was still leaning into. When the man's face wasn't blocking his view of hers, he saw there were tears in her eyes that she was stubbornly refusing to let fall, and that she had managed to bite her own lip so hard it was bleeding slowly out of several crescent shaped marks along the lower surface. She wouldn't look at him. It was like she refused to meet his eyes. Once again he realized he had placed a blame onto her shoulders she was totally undeserving of.

The reality of the situation was so incomprehensible to him that it took him several seconds to get his brain around it. Tempest hadn't been making out with another man. She had been accosted in the hallway on her way back from the bathroom. And they had waited almost fifteen minutes for her to come back, even though they knew it didn't take anything near that long to use the washroom and walk down a hall. And he had thought about just walking away in anger, thinking she was participating willingly with the other man. His anger at himself multiplied his anger at the unknown man in the hall until he didn't know how he didn't have his hands around the other man's throat.

"What the fuck is it to you, pal?" the other man finally found his voice, and grunted out this question with it. As the last time he had seen the group of the girl's friends, the large man in front of him now had been no where to be seen, he didn't think there was a connection between the two of them.

"What the fuck is it to me?" Vince asked. He said it to himself in a low tone. The tone seemed to belay curiosity. What it really belayed to anyone who really knew the large man asking the questions was an intense white hot anger that was more likely to end with someone's death than with any other conclusion. "What the fuck it is to me is that the woman you're forcing yourself on is mine, and you're forcing her to kiss you in the club of a very good friend of ours. What the fuck it is to me is that the woman whose pants your hand is in is mine." His vehement claim of ownership came out without conscious thought. She could yell at him over it later if she was so inclined. For now he had a point to make, and that point was that people didn't mess with what was his.

"The fact the club is owned by a good friend is the sole reason why I'm not going to kill you in it tonight. Because I don't want to have to ask Hector to help me clean up the mess your blood would make, and have to have him help me get rid of your body after I ripped you into pieces with my bare hands. So if you get the fuck outta here right now, and never come back, you'll live. If you chose to hang around here and make something outta this," Vince chugged the rest of the beer in the bottle he was still clutching around the neck, before smashing the bottle against the wall, rendering jagged glass edges all around the center and fashioning a very brutal, impromptu weapon, "I'm gonna make sure it's the last thing you ever make into somethin'. We clear?" Only knowing the last thing his woman needed on top of everything else was seeing him spill the blood of another human being until that person's heart stopped beating stopped him from using his homemade blade. After the violence she had already suffered, the last thing she needed was to see him perpetrate more. The very real threat of it would have to be enough.

"Yeah, I hear you," the man stammered before darting unsteadily down the hall.

Vince watched him go, and started fighting to get his breathing under control. Started the struggle to get his temper in check. Once the other man was out of sight he dropped the glass he still had a stranglehold on. He was so wound up angry he had to physically force each of his fingers to open and allow him to drop the symbol of his almost uncontrollable rage and penchant for physical violence to the ground. He almost couldn't believe that he had managed to make what she needed from him come before his need to bleed the man who'd dared to trespass against his woman dry. "You ok?"

She nodded yes but didn't speak.

"You sure?"

She shook her head no. "Not really," she whispered. She finally looked up at him. "Nothing like that ever happened to me before. I don't know what to do about it. I don't know what I'm supposed to think."

"That that guy was an asshole. If it'd make you feel better I can still catch him and beat the shit outta him."

She seemed to give his offer some serious thought before answering. "I just wanna go home," she told him. A tear finally broke free of her lower lashes and rolled down her cheek. "I just wanna go home."

"Aw, come 'ere." He pulled her into his arms. "I got you now. He ain't comin back Trouble. And if he does it'll be the last thing he'll ever do."

She didn't doubt it. Much as he'd tried to hide it from her, the rage on his face had been plain to see. She allowed herself another moment of leaning on his strength and breathing in his comfortable and familiar smell before she tried to do anything else. She wanted to calm down and find normalcy before seeing any of her friends again. "Let's just get outta here." She seemed to pull herself together fractionally. "When did you get here anyway?"

"With Dom and Letty." He kept his arm around her shoulders and started to head for the booth where he'd left his friends.

"I didn't see you before now."

"I stayed outside for awhile. Knew some people."

It forced a small laugh out of her. "Where don't you?"

He chuckled. "Around this scene, not very many places."

She stopped walking and due to his hold on her he stopped too. She looked up at him where he stood, still several inches taller than her despite her platform sandals.

"Wha'?" he asked, puzzled as to why they had stopped moving while still inside the hallway and no where near their friends.

She lifted one shoulder in a flippant, noncommittal answer before standing on her tiptoes and pulling his face down the short distance needed to allow her to press her lips against his. His shock lasted only a fraction of a second, maybe less, before he felt into what still felt so right between him and her. His hands on her hips, hers on his shoulders, her body fitting against his like it was moulded to rest there. Her hand sliding around to tangle in the hair on the back of his head. His sliding up along her side to cup the side of her face. The fingernails of her free hand scraping gently against his nape, hinting of other places they could be scoring. His hand sliding from her hip to the small of her back to hold her closer to him. Nothing having relevance in the world beyond the sensation of her heat melting into his. When he finally gained enough sanity to stop trying to fuse himself with her in the middle of a still crowded club he rested his forehead against hers. He felt like he could cheerfully drown in her. The whole situation made him so angry, he almost had to go find the man he had let escape to have someone to take his frustrations out on. She broke up with him. What was she doing kissing him like she couldn't wait to get him alone after what she had said earlier in the evening? "What the hell was that?"

"You mean other than incredible?" she asked on a breathless laugh, her hands locked together behind his neck.

"Yeah, other than that."

"Right," she said, on another shrug. "Something I chose because I wanted it. Something that felt right."

"It's a little confusin' to be dropped-to quote Leon-like I was hot, and then kissed like your starving and I'm a snack later the same night."

"Yeah, sorry 'bout that." She grinned at his words, couldn't help herself. Dropped like he was hot! Did we get our ego bruised tonight, Darling? When she thought about why she'd up and kissed him again after giving herself a strict hands off policy, she sobered. "Someone tried to take that from me. My right to chose what I want. I guess I just wanted to prove to myself that when I want to give it to someone, it's just different, and it's still my choice who I actually enjoy myself with."

He sighed. It was pretty hard to stay mad at her after that admission. He couldn't hold back from the instinct telling him to kiss her again so he did. He was still angry. But now he was dealing with being both angry, and some other emotion he couldn't quite place. He wanted to be able to make everything better for her, but there wasn't any way for him to accomplish it and the feeling of helplessness frustrated him. "He was an asshole, Trouble. You didn't do anything wrong. And I'm assumin' that he didn't really get to take anything from you other than what I saw." If he had, he'd be dead and it didn't matter how long it took to track him down.

"No, he just tried to make me kiss him back. He didn't get very far with," she stammered to a stop, unwilling to continue. "With the other stuff he tried. I was in the washroom for most of the time I was gone. He only had me stopped there for two or three minutes before you came along."

"Good."

"I'm so tired right now that I don't know how I'm still standing." She sighed. "Too bad I doubt I'll unwind enough to sleep tonight anyway." She looked up at him with a rueful smile. "I know from first hand experience how hard it sucks to be awake to see the hangover comin'."

"Once we get home you'll be ok. Let's go before Dominic sends an away team. He was getting to the end of his rope when I left him to get my beer."

"Ok, let's go." She allowed him to start walking, taking her with him. "V?" She stopped walking again.

"Yeah?" he asked, and a hint of his impatience at being stopped again when all he wanted was to be out of the bar and on their way home showed through in his tone.

"Don't tell them what happened."

"Why the fuck not?" He was obviously angry with her request. "They should all know so they can keep an eye out for him if he comes around you again."

"After the scare you gave him?" she asked, both her eyebrows arched in disbelief. "Please! We'll never see him again. I'll be surprised if he ever grows enough balls to so much as darken the door of this place again. 'Sides, if they didn't get a good look at him, how would they ever know him even if he was walking right behind me?"

"It don't seem right not to tell them."

"It don't seem right to tell them, to me. It'd just worry Jesse for no good reason. There's nothin' anyone can do about it now that hasn't already been done. Unless we're gonna go find the guy and call a cop to charge him with assault or whatever the fuck, what else can anyone do about it?"

"Find the fucker and cut his nuts off is the first thing that comes to mind."

"And you could still do that without telling the rest of them. You're the only one, aside from me, who knows what he looks like in the first place. Let's just say you got impatient to get outta here and came lookin' for me and found me asleep in the bathroom. You woke me up and waited for me to wash up so I didn't fall back asleep."

"You'd rather be embarrassed by that stupid story than tell the truth?"

"I'd rather be a bit embarrassed by the stupid story than worry Jess and Leon and ruin the rest of the night for everyone, yes. So can we drop it at that, please?"

"Fine! Have it your way. Still think it's stupid," he finished in a mumble.

"Come on Slick, let's go home."

They finally made it out of the hallway and started toward the table.


	31. Of Trust and Low Expectations

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Thirty-One – **Of Trust and Low Expectations**

"Will you look at that," Leon drawled, watching Tempest and Vince cross around the dance floor, Vince's possessive arm around his companion's shoulders.

Dom sighed, rubbing his head. "I thought you said she dropped him at races."

"She did."

"Guess she changed her mind," Jesse added.

"I didn't see Vince being able to overlook the fact that she dropped him in public," Letty said.

"Maybe he didn't. Maybe he's just holding her upright or some shit," Jesse said, grinning. "She's so wasted I don't know how she didn't fall down in a drunk pile somewhere ages ago."

"She is pretty drunk," Leon admitted with a grin. "And it's mostly your fault," he accused Jesse. "Every time she stopped drinkin' you appeared another shot in front of her."

"She's a riot when she's loaded. Am I right or what?" Jesse grinned.

"She's not gonna be lovin' you too much when she wakes up in the morning," Leon reminded. "But I never dreamed she was crazy enough to pole dance."

"She's crazy enough for anything when she's drinking tequila."

Before anyone else could make a comment, Vince and Tempest reached the booth. "You guys ready to head out?" Vince asked the group.

"Yeah," Dom answered with a relieved sigh, glad they could finally be underway. "What the fuck kept you guys?"

"Bumped into each other in the bathroom hall and got to talkin'," Vince answered in a tone that left no room for further discussion.

Tempest looked up at him in shock. He made up a lie to tell his friends all in the interest of keeping her secret and not embarrassing her in front of her cousin and his friends. It seemed out of character for him. But that didn't stop her from being glad he'd done it. So she had a serious decision to make for herself. She had told him she was done with him. And she had meant it. But had she made a mistake? Or was his conduct tonight enough to compensate for his words this morning? Was the comfort and pleasure she knew she would find with him tonight worth what she knew was coming when she left? Was a week of his company worth the week of fights and heartbreak that would go hand in hand with it? It was a simple decision really. It only took a minute movement to allow her to lean into his side and slide a hand into one the back pockets of his jeans. With him she felt safe from the world. What he could do to her all on his own would have to be a worry for another day.

"Well, whatever. Let's go already," Dom said with a long suffering sigh.

They all walked into the parking lot after saying good night to Hector. They headed for where Mia's car was parked, with Letty's sitting right beside it.

Like he knew something he hadn't been told, Leon offered to ride with Dom and Letty for the trip home. It left the back seat of Mia's car free for Tempest and Vince. Not that anyone was sure what was going on between the two of them, but it was still clear something was. Leon didn't even know if he was doing either of them any favours to be enabling whatever they thought they were doing. But something was just off about Tempest, and if she wanted to be with Vince, than that was what he was going to let her do.

It wasn't like Vince was clear on exactly what was up between Tempest and him either. It was something he couldn't help but think on as he walked toward Mia's car, his arm still around Tempest's shoulders as she leaned wearily against his side. He wasn't even willing to yell at her anymore. Not after what she'd been through. Angry as he still was about the joke she'd helped play on him and about what she'd said to him at races, it was scary how fast seeing someone being harmed changed your mind about how much you needed to fight with them. He was willing to keep his anger inside if it meant keeping her from any further distress. Wanting to wrap a woman in cotton wool and protect her from everything that could hurt her wasn't something he was used to. Least of all with a woman like her. A woman who hardly seemed to need anyone nine times out of ten. She was the last person who would appreciate him thinking he needed to protect her from anything, yet she was the only one he had ever really felt that way about.

He really hadn't ever even felt that way about Mia. Sure, he felt a desire not to share her; he was possessive over her, jealous when she dated other guys. But he had never felt a need to protect her from the world. Just a need to be the only guy she was dating and sleeping with. He growled at himself internally. He hated to over-think on things like he was currently doing. Why couldn't his brain just see that he had found a guy trying to do something he found repulsive, to a woman he had come to care about due to her relationship with one of his best friends and the fact they had had several nights of very good sex, and let it go? Why did he have to think about what it meant that he thought about her differently and felt about her differently than he did other girls?

Before he could spend any more time over-thinking the answers to that question, they stopped beside the car and Mia unlocked the doors. He opened the door before Jesse could and flipped the seat forward. He slid in, crawled over to the far side, and watched as Tempest slid into the back with him before Jesse could. Jesse tried, but his little cousin was a little quicker on the draw. Vince wanted to be upset that Jesse didn't even want her to share a car seat with him for a half hour drive home, but he couldn't. He'd done enough to her in a week to understand why Jesse was feeling protective. But when it came down to brass tacks, his cousin was only two months younger than he was. He couldn't protect her from things she didn't want to be protected from.

And judging by the way she landed on her own side of the back seat before promptly falling over to land with the back of her head on his thigh as her cheek pressed against his stomach, she had made her choice. "Man, I'm so drunk and tired," she moaned, kicking her feet up onto the seat to better stretch out. "If I'm passed out or dead when we get home, just leave me in the car 'til morning. If I'm dead, you can deal with it then. If I'm passed out, I'll just sleep in here until I wake up. Ok?"

"Sure," Mia replied, laughing. "You can just sleep in my car. But if you throw up back there, I'll have to kick your butt."

"Yeah, _you_ threatening me is real scary," Tempest said on a yawn, as if to illustrate how not scary the prospect was.

Jesse chuckled. "Don't think she takes you seriously at all Mi."

"I got that, thanks," Mia answered, giggling softly. "She actually pass out?" she asked, when Tempest didn't have a smart ass reply.

"I think so," Vince answered, talking low to let her stay out of it if she was. He tipped his head back onto the headrest and allowed himself to drift, idly toying with Tempest's hair with one hand as the other stroked absently over her stomach. She shifted in her sleep with a quiet groan, settling on her side facing the back of the car seat with her head turned on an angle to allow her cheek to rest against his stomach. His hand reached out to brush hair out of her face without conscious thought. When her eyes fluttered open a few minutes later he was still unconsciously stroking her hair back from her face.

"Did I fall asleep?" she murmured.

"Yeah, for about ten minutes. We got twenty or so more to drive, so just go back to sleep."

She yawned sleepily in answer to his statement before shifting again, sitting up before reclining against his chest and closing her eyes. "If you say so."

He shifted sideways against the side of the car so she was reclined onto the center of his chest at a more comfortable angle. "You know, pretty much the only time you listen to me is when you're exhausted and you're half asleep."

"Um," she answered, burrowing closer into him.

He wasn't sure if she was even aware what she had answered to. He was pretty sure she was actually already back asleep. He was sure of it when she snored softly a few times before fisting one hand in his shirt as if she needed to hold onto something to make sure they wouldn't leave her alone. There was that need to keep her safe again. It was hard not to feel that way when she was curled up against him so trustingly, as though she could sleep because he was there. It was a sobering, completely terrifying thought. Mia and Jesse were talking softly but he couldn't follow their conversation at all. He was too wrapped up in watching the subtle emotions that played across the face of the girl in his arms while she slept, as he fought against a rising tide of panic. She trusted him. Really, honestly, trusted him-in spite of everything. Could that be good? When it came to her, and his ability to treat her the way she deserved, he didn't trust himself. How could she trust him so totally? His thoughts encompassed his total attention as he struggled to pigeonhole how he felt about the whole situation.

So much so that when they parked at home, he wasn't really aware where they were, just that the car had stopped moving.

"So, are you both going to sleep back there all night?"

Mia's question brought him out of his own little world. "Shit, guess I felt asleep too," he said. He hoped it would cover up for the way he had been acting.

"Yeah, ok," Mia answered. Her tone gave away the fact she didn't buy his story for a second. "You coming into the house or not?"

"Yeah. Fuck, gimme a second, would you?"

"Ok. Don't bite my head off. What're we going to do with her? Leave her here to sleep like she said?"

"No. I'll take her in the house. Don't worry about it."

"Vince," Mia started and then stopped on a sigh.

"What?" he growled in reply to a question which had only been implied, not asked.

"It's just," Mia paused again. "It's just that it was likely a good thing that someone put a stop to things where they did. I don't think it's such a hot idea for the two of you to pick back up where you left off."

"Your concern is duly noted, mother," Vince snipped sarcastically. "You think I'm gonna just. Gonna just," there was no good way to finish that thought when talking to Mia, Vince mused as he pondered how to finish his sentence. "Just gonna," he growled instead of saying anything else, "while she's passed out drunk? You think I'm that low?"

"Of course not! I'm just worried. About both of you. And I know it's none of my business. But I worry."

"I know you do. But you don't have to. We're gonna be fine." He wanted to tell Mia everything, so she'd understand. Because he wanted to get it off his chest, didn't want it to be solely his worry anymore and wanted to share the burden with someone else. But he couldn't violate the trust that had been placed in him. He sighed. "She can't be alone in case she gets sick in the night, ok? That's all there is to this. You don't have to worry."

"When did you turn into a knight in shining armour?" Mia asked with a giggle.

"Dunno," he mumbled in discomfort. "Don't assign me boy scout points I didn't earn, Mia. I owe her plenty. This is the least I can do."

"Guess I can't argue with that. Get to bed before you fall down already."

"Well, if someone'd shut up, I'd be down the stairs already."

"Man, you can be a real prince, you know that V?" Mia slammed the car door closed after Vince got out of the back seat, somehow managing to juggle his hold on the sleeping Tempest and keep his own balance. She shook her head in annoyance. Was there anything a person could say to Vince that he wouldn't take the wrong way? On purpose, to have a reason to act like a jackass half the time?

"Yeah, yeah, I'm an asshole. I get it already. Shit, I hear it a couple hundred times a day lately. I might be stupid, but I ain't that stupid that I don't get it."

"Yeah, stupid is the last thing you are," Mia retorted sharply. "Not that you want to let on to that. At least if we all think you're stupid, we don't expect too much out of you."

Sick of the argument, Vince only shrugged. "Can I go to bed now? I'm pretty tired and she's a dead weight here."

"Yes, just go already." Mia watched Vince precede her up the walk and fought a need to stomp her foot after him. _What a frustrating man!_


	32. Of Jealousy and Liking It

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Thirty-Two – **Of Jealousy and Liking It**

When Vince stepped off the stairs in the basement his gaze moved from the sofa to his bedroom door. What was he supposed to do with Tempest? She hadn't seemed to hate him anymore before she'd fallen asleep. But was that more about him saving her and her being grateful, or was it about her wanting to take back what she'd done at races? He wasn't about to wake her up to ask her, given that she'd been so convinced she wouldn't get any sleep at all. Not to mention that if he woke her up to ask her about their violent break-up and subsequent make-up then he'd have to talk to her about both, something he'd do anything to avoid. And none of that helped answer the question of where he was supposed to put her to bed.

The decision was made when he realized she deserved to have privacy if she woke up sick or worse. _Crying. _What a horrible, sickening, terrifying thought. Her waking up crying with him the nearest thing to her, and thus him being forced to deal with the waterworks. But, at least knowing what he was going to do gave him a direction to take. He shoved the door of his room open with his toes and lay her down on the bed. He started to look around in her clean laundry pile for a baggy shirt to give her. He settled on a long tank top when it became clear she didn't own a tee shirt.

"So I'm a dead weight, am I?"

Her sleepy, groggy question tinged with laughter at his expense checked him. He turned back to the bed. She'd rolled onto her side and pulled a pillow under her head and was now staring at him sleepily as a smirk flirted around her mouth. She looked so relaxed and sleepy. He wanted to just crawl in with her and try to find some of that warm, sated happiness for himself. But that sounded far too sappy so he refused to admit to it. "When you're not conscious enough to co-operate? Hell yeah."

"Guess you aren't as strong as you look."

"I never said you was _heavy_. I said you were a dead weight. There's a difference," he growled. She had to go and wake up and start torturing him when all he wanted was to pass out in peace.

"Not one I see," she said, finishing on a yawn she blocked with her hand in a languid motion coloured with sleep.

"Tough. And now that you're awake you can have a glass of water before you go back to sleep."

She pouted. "I don't want any water."

"Well, let me think about that. Tough. You're having water. Then I'm having water and we're going to sleep."

"I ain't gettin' up for water," she spit the last word out with a sneer.

He laughed at her. Couldn't help himself. She looked so funny, three sheets to the wind, next thing to passed out in his bed pouting about having a drink. Unable to help himself, he walked around to the side of the bed she was on and looked down at her. "I'll bring it back here, but you have to drink it." He tossed her the shirt he'd picked out. "Make yourself useful and change while I'm gone."

She sat up halfway in the bed, propped up on her hands as her face pulled into a ferocious scowl. "Who do you think you are?"

"For tonight, as the comparatively sober one, I think I'm the boss."

"Think again. And who taught you the word comparatively? I wanna make sure they don't teach you any other words you could choke on."

"Ha ha! That's funny." He sneered down at her sarcastically. "Change," he repeated, punctuating the command with a hand pointed in her face. He turned to leave the room.

When his back was turned to her she stuck her tongue out at him, scrunching up her nose in a childish show of irritation. Changing sounded an awful lot like work. All she wanted to do was close her eyes and allow herself to drift off again. Changing her clothes and drinking water didn't really figure into her evening plans. Everything she did felt like she was doing it under deep water. Her head felt like it was filled with the same, and it was a huge effort just to remain conscious. With a groan she got up off the bed. If she didn't do as he wanted her to before he came back, she'd just have to listen to him some more. If there was a single person in the world who could out-stubborn her, it had to be him. This fact irritated her to no end.

He was back quicker than she had figured he would be. Of course, it could also be that her perception of time was skewed by her mental state. She was thinking quite slowly. Perhaps she was moving slower than her usual as well. When he walked through the door, the soft cotton of the undershirt he had given her to wear was just settling around her hips. "Hope you're happy!" she growled. "I got up and I changed. Happy now?"

"No. You still gotta drink this before I'll count as happy. Here." He handed over the glass he was carrying and watched as she downed the entire contents. It didn't even appear she had stopped for air during. She handed him the empty glass with a sarcastic sneer.

"There! I drank your water."

"I see that," he said. A snort of laughter escaped from him, despite his best effort to keep it in. He fought a groan as he watched her eyes narrow. Laughing at her right now wasn't the smartest move he could have made.

"_What_ is so funny," she ground out.

"You got water all over the front of you. How you missed a mouth that big I don't know, but you did."

She looked down at herself, saw he was right, and sighed softly to herself. She looked up at him, looking so smug, and just so, well, right. "Oh, bite me!"

"With pleasure. Where would you like it?"

"On my ass, smart guy."

"Ok, assume the position."

"What position?"

"Lay down on your belly with your ass bare and I'll bite it for you."

"It's a figure of speech, which you know as well as the next person. I'm tired, getting hung over, and cranky. Stop trying to be a wise ass."

"I'm just tryin' to do what you tell me to. I'm tryin' to co-operate here." He grinned.

"Sure you are. You just want an excuse to jump my bones while I'm drunk and vulnerable."

"I'm not the one who kissed the other the way you did back at Hector's. Who wanted to jump who then?"

Her face took on a pinched look of distaste when he called her out. He was right, and she didn't care for it. "Seems like the polite thing to do would be to not draw attention to it," she mumbled.

"Don't know who you think you're with that polite figures into it."

"I don't either. I'm clearly delusional."

He hooked some of her wildly tousled curls behind her ear. "You're kinda cute when you're drunk, tired, sleepy and delusional." _Where the fuck did that come from?_

"I'm about to be cute while I'm all those things and in the bed, not standing beside it. You can stand there all night if you're so inclined, but I've been on my feet all night."

"Don't remind me."

"Why?" she asked as she crawled into the bed and flopped back with a sigh of happiness. She was finally in bed with both things he'd decided she had to do before she could sleep done. Could passing out be far behind?

"Because I'll have to spank your ass instead of biting it if you remind me how you paraded around a stripper pole all night."

"It's not like I stripped."

"Might as well've."

"I disagree. No one saw anything they wouldn't have seen while I just danced on the normal dance floor."

He wasn't prepared to argue with her any longer while on his feet. She might be tired, but so was he. The adrenaline response of discovering her being held against her will, and then having his hands tied to do anything much in response had taken a lot of out him. He walked around the bed and got in. "Yeah, but there were lots of people on the 'normal' dance floor. There were only five of you on the raised stage you were doing what you did on." He didn't care for the look on her face one bit, after he made his statement. She had evil intent written all over her. He settled on his back, hands hooked under his head, and waited for the fallout to begin. He was sure he was right about the fact there was going to be some sort of smart aleck retort out of her when she came up on her side and looked down at him.

"You're kinda cute when you get all indignant and drunk and jealous."

"I'm not jealous."

She smiled. "You are so jealous. Other guys were lookin' at my goodies and you didn't like it."

"I don't care who looks at you. Go back tomorrow and take your clothes off for all I care." Her catching him being jealous did not put him in a good mood.

She reclined on her side with her head propped up on one hand beside him, staring down at him with a smug look on her face. "You're so jealous," she teased, before flicking him on the nose with her finger. He grabbed her hand.

"Don't."

"Or what? What're you gonna do about it, jealous pants?"

"You don't wanna know what I'll do about it," he growled.

Even knowing he was getting really angry wasn't enough to make her stop teasing him. She was still too drunk to comprehend just how bad an idea it was. "You're only gettin' so pissy 'cause I caught you bein' jealous about other guys watchin' me with the pole."

"I. Am. Not. Jealous," he ground out through clenched teeth.

"Ok, you're not jealous," she agreed with a patronizing tone and look on her face. "Just get some sleep."

In a flash, he went from lying on his back beside her to looming over her with her pinned on her back. "I warned you."

"So you did. Now what?"

Her amusement in the face of his anger angered him further. So did the fact he didn't have any idea what to do with her. What could he do with her? Nothing he did ever tempered her smart mouth. He'd tried to find something that would and nothing managed. A big part of him was just happy she was happy again, smiling. But he couldn't let her get away with talking to him the way she was. "You're not too big for me to take over my knee."

"What's with this obsession you have with _my_ ass and _you_ spanking it? Could it be because you sometimes spank it while thinking of my ass?" She smirked.

"That tears it," he growled. He did the only thing he could think of to shut her up. He pressed his lips against hers.

With a sigh of surrender she kissed him back as though he had first kissed her just to kiss her, not to shut her up. The anger quickly left the act, replaced by something that felt strangely like tenderness. It was the first time she could ever recall that they had kissed in view of a bed—never mind in one—and not spent as much time biting at each other as they did enjoying each other. Her hands crossed behind his neck, her fingers stealing into his hair to tease the silk texture of it even as his hand came up to frame her face. After another minute, when his mouth wandered from her mouth, across her cheek and started down her neck, she sighed. It wasn't that he seemed like he didn't want to be with her, but both their involvement lacked a certain burning need to be together that was normally present so strongly it consumed them both. The almost gentle kissing and nibbling wasn't the way they were together. She knew she was exhausted and figured he was pretty beat himself. "V?"

"Um?" he muttered against the side of her neck.

"You know, we could just," she paused. Would she hurt his feelings if she acted like she would rather just pass out than pass out after sex? "Well," she hesitated.

"Go to sleep?" he asked, sounding almost hopeful.

"Well, I mean, yeah. If you want to," she added quickly.

"Well, I mean, only if you want to. Go to sleep I mean."

"I could go either way, really. I mean, I could always," she trailed off. "But I could sleep too."

"Well, I could definitely always," it was his turn to pause. "But I mean, I like to sleep as much as the next person."

"There's always later. We could just sleep for a while first, maybe. Rest up."

"Yeah, good idea. We'll get some rest first."

She allowed herself to be settled against his side with a tired, but content sigh. She knew she was going to need a good night's sleep. Tomorrow was going to suck, and suck a great deal. She would not only have to deal with the mother of all hangovers, if history was any sort of teacher at all, but would also have to deal with the displeasure of Mia, Dom and Jesse over what they would perceive as her reunion of every sort with Vince. She sure had gotten quite good at complicating her life, she mused just as sleep claimed her.

Sleep relinquished its hold over her at around two the following afternoon. It did so in a most violent way. She woke up with a pressing need to be sick. As she ran to the bathroom, she couldn't help but muse that her good luck had been bound to run out sooner or later. She had been very drunk several times since arriving in California, and had managed to escape being hung over each time.

Until now.

This was definitely where her luck ended. Because, man was she sick this time. Despite the fact there was really nothing left in her stomach to come up, she still heaved for several minutes before she felt well enough to stand up again. She washed her face with cold water and brushed her teeth before picking up the bucket still downstairs from her last brush with the morning after and headed back into Vince's room, dragging her feet and pressing a hand to her forehead. All she wanted was to fall back into bed in the dark and sleep until she didn't want to die. Given Vince's love of sleeping until obscenely late hours, she was hoping her flight from the room hadn't woken him, and that she could crawl back into bed and fall back asleep before he had even realized she was gone.

She set the bucket on the floor by the head of the bed and crawled back in. She managed to keep her moan of misery low pitched. She lay on her side, facing the edge of the bed where her bucket was and closed her eyes.

"Where'd you go?"

Vince's question, uttered in a low, sleepy tone shocked her a bit. He came up on his side behind her and draped his arm over her waist. She leaned back into him with a sigh. So much for him staying asleep. "Bathroom."

"You ok?"

"Nothing a few hundred more hours of sleep won't fix."

"Is that a bucket?" Vince asked, peaking over the edge of the bed.

"Yeah," she answered quietly.

"That bad?"

"And likely worse. If it's gonna gross you out if I throw up, now'd be a good time to take off," she cautioned as she frantically scrambled to grab her bucket.

Rather than take her offered excuse to take off, he pulled her hair back behind her and rubbed her back. "Didn't think to take water back with you, huh?" he asked after she finished and sagged back into him.

"No point. I won't be able to keep anything down when I feel this shitty."

"No, but you could have at least been able to rinse your mouth if you brought water with you."

She agreed with a nod. "You can bail, you don't have to stick around and deal with this shit."

"I'm not ready to deal with the rest of this house. Don't worry about it. You throwin' up is hardly the worst thing I've had to see. 'Sides, you've hurled in front of me before."

She groaned. "Don't remind me. I'm always at my worst around you."

"That's not true. I've seen you lookin' pretty good too."

"Yeah, and you've also seen me vomiting several times, getting in fights, and getting man handled by some creep. I have no dignity left now anyway, I guess."

"Well, dignity is over rated anyway. It's better to live without it, stop letting it bother you, and act however you want than it is to always try to edit yourself to suit other people."

She laughed. "You could be right, I suppose." She stopped talking to groan. "Don't make me laugh. It hurts too much."

"I could get you that water and some aspirin?"

"I guess it couldn't hurt to see if I could keep them down."

He got up, sliding away from her carefully. "I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere."

"Yeah, as soon as your back's turned I'm off to run a marathon."

"Nothing about you would surprise me. Not even if you planned to run a marathon while puking."

"Thanks for drawing attention to it again."

"It's just me'n you, Trouble. And it's hard not to have attention drawn to it when you're doing it right in front of me."

She moaned in slight embarrassment. "I'm never drinking again."

"How many times have you said that?" he asked, paused with his hand on the doorknob.

"Too many to count up, but this time, I mean it."

"Sure you do," he left the room with a chuckle. When he came back into the room, she was dozing on her side with one hand under her cheek and the other arm draped over a pillow. He was torn, unsure if he should just let her continue to sleep, or wake her up and make her take the pills. In the end, he figured he'd drug her. She could sleep while the water sat in her stomach and she might just manage to keep most of it down long enough for it to start to rehydrate her. "Ok, water and Tylenol, just what the doctor ordered for alcohol induced headaches."

"You just had to wake me," she said on a moan.

"It must be the sadist in me, I guess. Now sit up and drink this, and take these, and then you can go back to sleep."

"You get entirely too much joy out of this, and I can tell."

"I get no joy out of you bein' sick."

"You say that like you mean it." She looked up at him in shock. He sounded serious. She would have figured that he would be the first one to love seeing her miserable, as repayment for her making him watch her dance with the stripper pole and be jealous all night.

"I do. I was supposed to get some when you woke up, but now you're too sick. How'm I supposed to be happy about that?"

"What I told you you'd get while I was drunk, and what I actually intend while sober are two different things."

"It don't really matter. I have no intentions of taking advantage of the puking chick. We can re-evaluate our options when you wake up able to not throw up, ok?" he asked, chuckling.

"Maybe when I wake up feelin' better I won't want another thing to do with your smug, mangy hide," she mumbled.

"That's a chance I'll just have to take. Now, go back to sleep and shut the hell up." Despite his curt words he slid back into his bed and then over to lay behind her.

"You really don't have to stick around."

"I know I don't. I really don't feel all that great myself, and I'm really not ready to be conscious yet. So if you'd just shut up and get some sleep, maybe I could too."

"Alright already," she mumbled, already starting to drift off. That was often how she felt when she was seriously hung over. Like she didn't want to anything but sleep. She had been known to sleep until seven or eight pm in fits and starts. She might wake up for awhile, feel not too bad, be sick again and then go back to sleep. She figured it was her body's way of telling her that it felt too bad to be dealt with, and that it would ultimately be better for her to just sleep until she didn't feel like death was a better option than life.

She surprised herself by sleeping for another two hours before she woke up. She tried to keep her need to be sick inside, but it didn't work out that way. Thankfully, there was only water to come up and it was over quickly. She carefully leaned back into the calm presence of Vince again and sighed.

"If I got as sick as you, I might not ever want to drink again either. Some shit, huh?"

"Tell me about it. I knew all that tequila was a bad idea. I mostly blame Jesse. I stopped buying my own long before he stopped buying me more."

"I'll help you kick his ass when you can stand up without falling over."

"I could stand up just fine right now. Maybe not without being sick again, but I could easily stand up."

"Jesse just wanted you to have a good time. I'm guessing he hasn't seen the aftermath firsthand of you having that good a time."

"No, he hasn't. But he's heard about it enough."

"Well, maybe the best punishment would be for me to go get him next time you think you're gonna hurl, and I'll make him hold your hair back."

"I don't need anyone to hold my hair back, and its bad enough you're seeing me this way."

"Why's it such a big deal? If you're sick you're sick. I hardly expect you to get up and find somewhere else to stay just 'cause you woke up sick. You slept here last night, you woke up here sick, so you can stay here and be sick. At least you're outta the way and its dark and quiet."

"It's a big deal because I look and feel so weak right now. I don't need anyone else seeing me like this," she muttered.

His hand rubbed idle circles on her stomach. "I don't think you're weak because you're sick now. You drank a lot, and dealt with what happened to you besides that. Being human doesn't make you weak."

"You are the last person I ever expected to hear that kind of sentiment from."

"Why's that?" he asked, half scared of the answer.

"Because normally Mr. Macho guys—of which, you are one—would be the last kind of person to think that showing human flaws doesn't make you weak."

"Well Trouble, if anyone tries to tell me that my human flaws make me weak, I'll just prove to them how very not weak I am," he chuckled. "Nothing drives home how not weak you are like pounding the guy who told you that you were into a bloody pulp."

"Spoken like a true Mr. Macho," she yawned.

"I don't feel all that macho when I'm holding the sick chick's hair off her face while she retches. Or while I'm running for her water and Aspirin."

She giggled sleepily. "A little humility won't hurt you. But you managed to even make doing those things seem like enough of a chore to you so as to save yourself the trouble of not looking manly."

"That's good. You're still not ready to be up yet, are you?"

"Don't think so. Why?"

"Because if you go back to sleep, you'll be quiet."

"Are you sure you still wanna hang out in bed with the sleeping, sick chick?"

"Yeah. If I get bored I might have to resort to feeling you up, but I'm surprisingly ok with that."

"I just bet you are."

"Go back to sleep."

She rolled over to face him, pushed him onto his back and made herself at home curled into his side.

He watched as, with one huge yawn, she settled into a comfortable position against him and with a contented sigh, relaxed totally and drifted off. He couldn't help the small spike of jealousy that came over him at her easy ability to just fall back asleep. Even though he loved to sleep in, this was pushing the limit of how long he wanted to stay in bed. But his need to take care of her was alive and kicking, not that he knew where it came from. He knew she didn't need him to take care of her, and wouldn't appreciate the sentiment of it either. But he wasn't willing to leave her to wake up alone. When he forced himself to let his mind drift off, he did mange to sleep again himself.

He woke up again hours later with the beginnings of a 'you spent far too much time asleep today' headache. It seemed she didn't have any similar issues in that regard herself. She was still contentedly sleeping where he had left her. A glance at the clock and a groan later and he was aware it was six pm. Whether she liked it or not, if she was able to be awake without throwing up, they were getting up. They had been in bed for fourteen hours and it was long enough to spend in bed. Well, long enough to spend in bed not entertaining each other in any event.

"You still asleep?" he asked her gruffly. He knew she was, but he was hoping his question would wake her up. She didn't answer, or wake up. She just burrowed closer to him, her face finding the hollow between his shoulder and neck as she settled in again with a sigh, her hand sliding down from his shoulder where it had been to drape casually over his hip. "You awake yet?" he pushed further, running a hand up her back to trail his fingers across her nape.

"No," she muttered, annoyed.

"Temp, we've been sleeping for over half a day."

"So what?" she retorted petulantly against the side of his neck. She was clearly pissed off.

"So…For over half a day, T."

"You had to wake me so _you_ could get up?"

Her whiny tone didn't suit her, but he knew how much he hated to be woken, so he had to understand in some ways. "I guess not. But are you really still feeling so terrible that you can't get up for awhile?" He paused. "Unless of course, you have some way to keep me from getting bored if I stay here with you?" His fingers left the fine hair at her neck and started to trip down her spine.

"V," she whined in a drawl.

"T," he drawled back. "You find me repulsive all of a sudden? You didn't seem to mind me with my hands on you too much last night." He waited for her to come back with a story about how drunk she was.

"I find myself repulsive. I haven't had a shower since yesterday. I haven't been to the bathroom in hours, and I seriously need to brush my teeth again before I let anyone else near my mouth."

He laughed. And was entirely too happy to hear her honesty. She didn't try to pawn off what she'd done, both their reunion in the club and what almost came afterward in his room, as a drunken mistake she hadn't known she was making. "Well, go to the bathroom and come back. I think I can help you forget how shitty you feel, and I promise you'll get sweatier before I'm done, so you don't need to worry there."

"I'll go to the bathroom, and see how I feel on the way back."

"Don't be long."

She just shot him a dirty look over her shoulder as she walked out of the room. He chuckled. She was so prickly. All dirty looks and petulance. You had to know where to look to find the crack in the armour that would let you in. She was gone longer than he thought necessary. Just as he was about to go looking for her she came strolling back in, wet hair hanging down her back. "You stopped to take a shower? I've been waiting on you to come back and finish what you started and you stopped to take a shower?"

"I felt all gross. I needed to. I was quick." She walked back up beside the bed and looked down. "If you're mad at me, I'll just go lookin' for Jess."

"I'm not mad, I'm frustrated."

She smirked, an eyebrow cocked to accent the smugness. "Might be good for you to live a little frustrated for awhile. You're awful full of yourself."

"Look who's talkin'." Vince growled.

"I got good reason to be stuck up."

"Oh yeah? What's that?" He looked up at her with a look that could only be described as dirty on his face.

"Because I made you jealous of a whole club full of other dudes, that's why," she answered, still smirking in a most smug manner. "You were so jealous that you told me to go back there tonight and take all my clothes off if I wanted in an attempt to hide just how jealous you were."

"I was not jealous," Vince bit out.

"Ok. I'm just gonna go find Leon and make out with him then. I think I'm ready for a little variety in my life." She turned to walk away from the bed. She found herself tossed back onto it in a heartbeat. She landed with a startled exhale as Vince landed half on her, pinning her down with a snarl.

"You are not going to so much as think about making out with anyone but me," Vince growled. She smiled, not smugly this time, but in that 'I've got a secret you want to know' way that drove him crazy.

Little did he know, she had him right where she wanted him. He might not be willing to admit he was jealous over her. But he was certainly showing it nicely. And it was good enough for her. In fact, the fact he clearly didn't want to be jealous was way better than had he simply been ok with his jealous feelings. If he didn't like it, that meant it was very real. She lifted her head off the pillow it had landed on and nipped the side of his neck where it joined his shoulder. He growled at her in his chest, the sound low and angry, very indicative of Vince. "In that case, you better be keeping me entertained," she retorted. She knew she was pushing her luck—and perhaps too far at that—but she couldn't help herself.

A look of incredulous anger flashed over his face, but was gone quickly, replaced by a look that Tempest knew from experience meant things were going to get a lot better for her very quickly. She was going to be tortured, this much she knew. But she was going to enjoy every second of it, this she also knew. Before she could analyze the situation any farther, Vince lowered his head toward her and nipped the skin over her collarbone hard enough to sting, but not hard enough to break the skin. She lost her battle to keep her breathlessly pleased gasp to herself and felt his self satisfied smirk against her skin.

Unwilling to be outdone, she grabbed a fistful of his hair and violently hauled his mouth to hers, biting his bottom lip with a similar amount of force. She was quite sure his bottom lip was going to end up very swollen, but she didn't draw blood. Much as his attitude often made her want to, she restrained herself with difficulty. He didn't take her reaction in step. She watched as he licked his lip, tongue testing out where her teeth had snapped. In his anger, her tank top didn't stand a chance. He didn't even bother trying to pull it off over her head. He simply grabbed the material on either side of the seam and pulled. The seam let go with a loud rending sound and a moment later her was tossing her shredded top to the floor.

"Was that necessary? I liked that shirt."

He didn't answer, just caught both her hands between one of his and raised them over her head. She wanted to struggle to get free, but pushed the need down with some effort. She didn't want to give him the satisfaction. She looked up at him with one brow cocked instead, as if to say 'that all you got?'

Her arrogance got to him, like it always did. He forced the growl that started to bubble in his chest back down and slowly lowered his mouth toward her skin. He nipped the curve of breast hard enough to leave an angry little red mark before swiping the same area with his tongue. As anticipated, his efforts wiped most of the smug look off her face. He told himself that under no circumstances was she getting her hands free until she fought his hold, or asked. Begged. Either way. For once she wasn't going to have the upper hand.

Sensing that again, their game was about power, she fought against any need to show a reaction. The fight got harder the longer he continued to touch her with his lips, tongue, teeth and free hand. Deciding that laying passively in the hope she could out-stubborn him wasn't the best plan, she instead forced a sultry look to her face and used her leg to rub down his hip before hooking it around his nearest leg. She wanted to shout about her minor win when her action forced him to sharply draw a breath and return his gaze to her face.

When he saw the siren look on her face, his plans of torturing her went out the window. He wanted her, and he wanted her now. When it came to who could resist the other longer, he supposed she had just won. Not that he was ever going to tell her that to her face. She already had some strange ideas in her head about how he felt about things. Thinking he was jealous of some random guys in a bar just about tore it. There was no way he was going to let her start thinking he was so caught up in her he couldn't tell her no. He might as well just hand her his balls on a silver tray, and he knew it.

She was one female who constantly pushed the envelope of how far she could take any situation. She was always pushing. Pushing him, pushing Dom, pushing her car. Pushing. Trying to see just how far she could take things before she took them too far. She didn't even seem to be too bothered when she did take things too far, either. Most of those times just turned into yet another situation for her to push against the boundaries of her world again. He didn't know why he let her get away with it around him. She got away with saying things to him and doing things to him that no one else would. He knew he wouldn't let Dominic talk to him the way she did. Not even in jest. He had his doubts if he would even let Mia try it. Of course, it would never enter Mia's motherly little soul to say the things that Trouble said, or do the things that Trouble did.

He could only surmise that as he'd been caught up in both his thoughts, and the way her skin tasted under his mouth, he had let her hands go free. Because before he had realized he'd turned her loose, she had her hands tangled in his hair.

"Stop daydreaming and get to it already!"

So she was pulling his hair and ordering him to stop messing around and finish what he'd started. Despite finding the situation anything but a laughing matter, he found himself chuckling. There she went again. She shouldn't be able to get away with ordering him to do anything. Not even with ordering him to 'hurry up and have sex with her, already'. But she could. Bossy, mouthy, troublesome woman that she was. And more the fool he, he thought with his last second where thought was possible, for not only giving her what she ordered him to give, but liking it too.


	33. Of Misdirection and Running Away

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Thirty Two – **Of Misdirection and Running Away**

When she next became conscious of the world around her, it was an hour later and the sheets of the bed were mostly on the floor. The fitted bottom sheet had come loose on one corner, and Vince's shirt was hanging off his mirror in a haphazard fashion. "That was angry sex, wasn't it?" she asked conversationally, still sprawled in the pillows where she had ended up at the end of their various contortions.

He flipped off her prone body before he answered. "Yeah. That was angry sex."

"We should fight first all the time."

"I thought we both already decided that we wanted to live to see our next birthdays."

"Well, there is that. But then there's the angry sex. I'm not so sure that another year is all that much better than lots more angry sex."

She sounded so serious he couldn't help his chuckle. "I can see where it's a hard debate."

"I just bet you can," she answered, raising an eyebrow. "But really, either side of the argument is a hard one."

"Where'd the potty mouth come from?"

"Um, maybe out of the ways I just learned my body can bend without breaking."

His look turned serious. "Bet I can show you a few more."

"But there's that need to live to see twenty again." As she finished her statement, her stomach growled.

"I totally agree. Food now, more sex later."

"Sex and food is all you ever think of."

"That's not true. Fighting and racing round out all I ever think of."

"Excuse me," she answered, giggling. "Where you takin' me?"

"Come again?"

"To feed me. Where you takin' me to feed me?"

"Maybe you should be cookin' me a meal for once." He smirked.

"That's Mia's job, an I don't want it."

"Well, there's always Fat Burger."

"And again, if you think I will ever darken the door of a place called Fat Burger, you need your head checked. Do you know how to get to that diner place that Jess likes so much?"

"Yeah."

"Well? Do you wanna go there?"

"I guess."

His petulant tone made her sigh. "You can get fries and a burger there, too. You don't need to go to some fast food joint named Fat Burger for burgers and fries."

"Let's just go already."

"You get awful whiney for a big boy, you know that?"

"Keep runnin' that mouth and see if I take you anywhere." He stood up off the bed with a longing glance at the tousled sheets and stepped into a pair of his boxers. Maybe he was ready to get up, and maybe he was starving. But finding an excuse to take the bed apart even further would still cancel it all out.

"I got a ride, and a cousin who knows where the place is. Do I really need you to make sure I get there? No. I keep you around for far different reasons." She got out of bed and stretched lazily.

He watched the play of her muscles under her now honey coloured skin. It was surprising how fast she'd coloured. There was something about how, even though she was quite strong her strength was tensile and supple, hidden from scrutiny unlike his own made him think about how she thought.

She wasn't a model. She wasn't an actress, so it didn't make sense for her to keep her body so toned and firm. She had to have a certain amount of physical strength for her job. But what had made her decide to go out and become as strong as she had? It didn't matter, because she had remained softly female in all the right places to counter his male hardness. But that overabundance of strength was still lurking there, just below the feminine shape. But why? Why did she think she had to be so strong? At least she didn't end up looking like one of those female body builders. At least she still looked like a woman.

Not that she was lushly female, because she wasn't. Her hips were slender and narrow. Her belly was flat and her breasts were firm and high. She wasn't actually built like the kind of girl he normally went after. She was still built like a female, but not the overtly womanly kind of girl he normally took home. Even Mia had a bigger chest, rounder hips and butt.

She looked back at him over her shoulder. "We goin' or not?"

Her mouthy words shook him out of his reverie. She was as strong and tough as she was because if she was going to act like a street thug, she had to be able to back it up. "I ain't takin' you anywhere until you put clothes on. You exhausted me too much for me to want to end up in a fight with some dude who tries to touch you."

"Well I ain't gettin' clothes on unless you tell me you're takin' me to dinner."

"I'll take you to dinner already." He rolled his eyes. "Get dressed."

She didn't answer. She shot him a dirty look instead and strode over to her bag. "Fuck me."

"What?"

"I'm gonna have to do laundry."

"Why?"

"I'm outta clean clothes, almost."

"So, rewear something."

"Girls don't do that. I have one pair of clean shorts left." She turned back to her bag and pushed stuff around. "But no shirts that aren't dressy."

"So wear a dressy shirt."

"With sweat shorts? I don't think so." She dressed as far in her own clothes as she could before striding over to the low dresser opposite and opening the drawer where she knew he kept his tank tops. She pulled one out and pulled it over her head. "I'll just help you generate laundry instead."

His shirt swam on her, and he knew he really shouldn't be allowing her to help herself to his things without asking, because it was going to go right to her head and make her think she could boss him around if she wanted to. But then there was what seeing her dressed in his clothes did for his sense of ownership over her. Everyone who saw them was going to know she was wearing his shirt. And that implied that she had gotten dressed in his room. And if she'd gotten dressed in his room, she likely been given a reason to do so. Like they had been ripping the sheets off his bed. Instead of getting pissed off at her he smirked. Yeah, ok, she could wear his shirt. In front of the team, in front of all the strangers of L.A. They could all look at her and know in whose room she'd woken up today. And how. And why. "You ready or not?"

"That's all you have to say?"

"Yeah. What were you expecting?" He fought down the laugh that bubbled up at the thwarted look on her face. She had expected him to get pissed off and fight with her about the whole stealing his stuff situation and when he hadn't, and thus she hadn't gotten her way, she got mad. She hid it well and quickly thought.

"Nothing. Let's go."

"We asking anyone else to join us?"

"V, it's almost seven. It's not like they all haven't eaten already."

"Guess you're right."

He led the way up the stairs toward the kitchen and found Mia washing up behind the team's supper. "Hey Mia," he said.

"Hi," Mia answered. It seemed obvious that she wasn't impressed.

"What's your problem?" Vince questioned in answer. Why was she pissy with him?

"I don't have a problem," Mia snapped.

Tempest pushed her way out from behind Vince, who had been trapping her on the stairs when he stopped dead at the top of them. "Sorry about missing dinner. I was too sick to get up." Mia looked at her and if Tempest wasn't mistaken there was a touch of contempt in her gaze.

"I'll just bet you were," Mia mumbled, really too under her breath for the others to catch.

Vince thought he caught the gist of it. "What did you say?" he questioned in a growl.

Though she didn't have a clue what Mia had said as her hearing really wasn't all that good at the best of times, Tempest still got the impression from Mia's posture and attitude that the Italian girl wasn't pleased with either her, or her male companion. And thus, she had a fairly good idea that Mia wasn't mad about them getting up so late and missing supper, but rather what had kept them in bed for the last part of their time there. Mia looked from her to Vince, and as Tempest watched, when she looked at Vince her eyes didn't just hold contempt. There was something that looked suspiciously like jealousy too.

Mia getting jealous of what she and Vince did didn't bode well, in her opinion. What, Vince wasn't worth her time of day until he was starting to see some other girl might be worth his? Then all of a sudden she might want him because someone else did and he returned the interest. It wasn't right. Mia didn't want him, and it was patently obvious. But then, because someone else did, and it seemed like Vince might just be starting to get over his silly childhood crush, she started to change her mind.

But was she just being paranoid, or being her ever perceptive self and sensing Mia's jealous reaction, Tempest wondered, and being pre-emptively jealous that Mia might just give Vince the shot he'd been waiting for once _she_ wasn't in the picture anymore, and it would all be because of how Mia had seen him act with her. A quick glance at Vince told her this possibility hadn't gone over his head, and he was intrigued by it. With a sigh she decided she couldn't win. _I know what my name is,_ she sighed mentally, _but does it really mean my entire life has to be so stormy_?

She slipped off for the living room quietly, hoping neither of the other two people in the kitchen would notice her go, past their own involvement with each other. She wanted to deal with her wounds without Vince around to see how much the rapid change of his attention had hurt her. She couldn't give him the power to know he could hurt her. Not when he did it so often and so well. Her luck held, but she didn't know for how long. She found Jesse and Leon in the living room, trying to beat each other at PlayStation. "Hey guys," she said softly. "How's it goin'?"

"I'm about to kick your cousin's ass here, and then I'll answer pretty damn good. How're you?"

"Great, but starving. You guys wanna take me to the diner place we all liked so much last time?"

"Sure," Jesse answered, tossing down his controller with a groan when Leon did in fact beat him. "Why isn't V h-"

"He just ain't. Can we go already," Tempest cut her cousin off and pushed for the quick exodus. "I'm starving."

"Ok," Leon drawled, picking up the fact that she was running away from Vince for some reason again. He stood up off the floor and walked to the door, where he slipped his boots on and picked his keys up off the table there. Jesse followed him over and pushed his feet into his boots and Tempest kicked on her flip flops and hauled the door open. She then ran to the yellow Skyline and slid into the passenger seat. Jesse finally picked up on the fact that the name of the game was to go fast. He ran down the lawn and dived into the back seat with a laugh. Leon slid into the driver's seat, chuckling the whole time, and started the car. He reversed out of the drive with a squeal and tore off down their street.

"What was that?" Mia asked, breaking the staring contest which she and Vince had been participating in up until that point.

"Leon's car peelin' out," Vince answered her absentmindedly, still staring at her, wondering if he was imagining the slight softening on her face while she was looking at him. What Leon's car was doing taking off like that didn't occur to him.

"Why would Leon take off from here that fast at this hour of Sunday?"

Her question made Vince think for a moment. He had to admit, the things that Mia looking at him like that did to his brain made thought harder than normal. But when he finally wrapped his brain around the one main reason that might make Leon take off that fast it wasn't pretty. "Fuckin' son of a whore!"

"Vince!" Mia admonished.

He didn't answer her, but strode down the short hall into the living room. The PlayStation was still turned on, as was the TV and the controllers were discarded haphazardly on the floor in front of the TV. Leon and Jesse's boots were gone, as were the sandals belonging to Tempest. "Fuck!"

"What is your problem?" Mia asked, angry over the swearing being used.

"What's missing here, Mia?"

"Well, Leon and Jesse were using the video game until a few minutes ago."

"And who came upstairs with me but isn't here now?" Vince growled sarcastically, leading Mia through the deduction like she was a small child.

"Tempest. So what? They went out together. Jesse _is_ her cousin."

"She was supposed to be leaving with me."

When Mia realized what that meant, she felt somewhat guilty herself. What had she been thinking? Starting to think of Vince as something more than a childhood friend simply because someone else enjoyed his company? That wasn't right. Just because it was sort of nice to know that no matter what, someone always wanted you and thought you were perfect didn't give you the right to be angry that he found someone who really wanted him back. And that was all it boiled down to, she realized. And when she realized, she was ashamed. She had gotten jealous over something as stupid as the potential to lose her constant admirer and in the process had hurt Jesse's cousin and possibly messed up the chances of Vince to have a normal relationship with a girl. But what could she do about it now? Any effort on her part to point out how foolish it had been on Vince's part to ignore the woman he had just slept with to make eyes at her would need to be followed by an apology for her part in falsely participating and mucking around in his life and how hard it was going to be for the next few days. It would also have to include another one of those difficult conversations she had been having with him since she was sixteen about how she didn't see him in a romantic light. After she had just acted like she might, just now. So she wasn't going there. But she still felt like she should. "So what now?" she asked, her voice low and apologetic.

"You tell me," he sighed. "If I show up, she's just gonna be pissed, along with Leon, who's gonna be really pissed, and maybe worse."

"Why's Leon going to be mad?"

Vince sighed, not wanting to go into it. "He just is."

His short non-answer was really answer enough for her to get the picture. Leon wasn't impressed with the whole situation, in other words, and this would just be one more reason for him to be mad at Vince for how he was treating Tempest. Great! Now she was a part of the whole feud, where as she had been managing to stay mostly neutral. At least as far as Tempest knew, in any event. Sure, she had forced her opinion on Vince several times, but that was just the way things had always been. "Does Leon like her?"

Mia's definition of 'like' wasn't hard to fill in. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Maybe. He says no, and she says the same thing."

"But you're not sure?" Mia pushed just a bit further in a very passive, gentle tone. She didn't want to be told off, or close Vince off totally from their conversation.

"No, I'm not fuckin' sure," he growled. "He said something once about how," he trailed off. He didn't want to fill Mia in. He didn't want to tell her how Leon had said that if he didn't want Tempest for himself, really want her, he didn't have the right to tell Leon he couldn't have her if he did really want her. He didn't want to hear about how Leon was right. Not now.

Besides, if Leon didn't really want her, why would he have even gone there? Why bring it up? Was it just because Leon wanted to make him think? Or was there more to it than that? _Great_! He threw up his hands in the air. Now Mia had him going crazy with thoughts of Leon wanting 'his trouble' when he'd managed to put that line of-ok, he admitted it-jealousy out of his head. _Just fuckin' great_!

"How what, Vince?"

"How I didn't have the right to tell him he couldn't have her if he wanted her since I didn't. Not really." He watched as Mia's face turned contemplative.

"I can see where he's coming from, really. I just didn't think Leon thought about her that way."

"Yeah, well, neither did I."

"But now you do?"

"No. But I do think he, along with the rest of you, hates the idea of the two of us together, so now he's going out of his way to put an end to it. I also think more happened in that bedroom than the two of them playing one fuckin' hell of a practical joke." He finally gave voice to his private worry.

"You think?" Mia asked.

"I fuckin' well said it, didn't I?"

"Don't get mad at me because you messed up your life again Vince. I didn't make you do it, and moreover I told you it wasn't a good idea from the get go."

"I guess I was alone in the kitchen a few minutes ago. No wait, you were there too, and you didn't notice her slip out any more than I did. Because if you had, you'd'a been the first one to rub it in to me how I fucked up again."

Mia's face coloured at his correct observation. "I didn't see her go, no." She sighed. "Vince," she started, looking at him pleadingly.

"Don't start Mia. I don't need to hear another word." He knew where she was about to go, and he didn't need to hear that he fucked up the good thing he had going on over a moment of her indecision that didn't really change anything. As he'd told her last night, he knew he was stupid. He didn't need it rubbed in any further than it already had been.

"Ok. I get it. But now what are you going to do about the whole situation?"

"What can I do?"

"Go tell her your sorry would be a good start. Then acting like you really are."

He moved toward the front door. "I'm goin' out."

"You going to find them?"

"No. I'm just goin' out. I don't know when I'll be back."

"Ok. Fine. Run away from your problems. See how much that helps."

"Mia! For fuck's sake! What am I gonna do, huh? Go tell her that I'm sorry that I got caught up in looking at another girl and temporarily forgot she was right there beside me. Again? After we had just gotten up from tearing each other's clothes off and destroying my room? How would you have me start that apology?"

"I don't know." Mia blushed at the frank speech Vince used to describe his situation to her. "I guess I would have had you look at the girl who did those things with you like she was the most important thing in your life to date, which is only the way you should look at her in the first place, and then you wouldn't be in this mess."

"It's just sex."

Mia nodded. "Then you deserve everything you get for deciding to use a family member of this team that way. No matter what mistake I made out of a moment of my own stupidity, you're the one who decided to take her to bed. You're the one who didn't make it a one night, drunken mistake. You're the one who kept on taking her to bed. And apparently you're the one who knew all along that you were just using her for sex. I half wish she was Leon's cousin not Jesse's just because I know Jesse'll never tell you off over it but at least I'd get to see Leon kick your ass."

"That's real nice Mia. Thanks."

"Why should we be nice to you? After what you just told me I can only surmise you're just not a nice person Vince. I have dishes to finish." She turned to leave the room.

"Mia."

The begging tone to his voice checked her. "What?" she asked shortly.

"What do I do?" he asked in a small voice.

"I don't have the answer to that for you Vince. You're just going to have to clean this one up on your own."


	34. Of Rules and Breaking Them

AN: Was that it? Heavens no! There are about twenty more chapters already written, waiting to be edited and proofed, and about ten more chapters to write. But soon, this is where the story gets a bit 'huge'. I'm doing my best to keep the reactions of the people and the other factual stuff realistic. But the situations that I'm dreaming up and putting the characters into are a bit far fetched. I'm also going to do something with Tempest that some people will hate. I'm sorry in advance, but it had to be done, in my mind. But still, I'm sorry:D Yet, that's a chapter for another day. But on the subject of the grandiose nature of the things that are going to start being done, I warned everyone from the start this was going to be a 'popcorn flick' and I wasn't kidding. Also, I know Vince is being an idiot, but he has his reasons. It's a balancing act of when to reveal them, and how, for me. Too early and it won't be as effective. Too late and I'll have lost people because they'll be too busy wondering where I went wrong with the character to keep reading. She's not an innocent either. She makes situations worse with her attitude. So it's not all on him. Just know the fact that they are each very good at emotionally wounding the other will become important later. That's all for now. Please review if you have absolutely anything to say! Frick, just please review. :D T

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Thirty Four – **Of Rules and Breaking Them**

The ride to the diner was quiet. It was clear Tempest was lost in her own world and the guys didn't know if it was smart to try and engage her in conversation so they just didn't. While perhaps more in tune to the feelings of others than their thick friend, the were also not in tune enough with the thoughts and feelings of females to attempt to say the right thing to one they didn't want to hurt. So it was easier to remain silent and let her attempt to work out whatever was bothering her on her own. It was Jesse who decided to break the silence first.

"You musta been some sick when you woke up this morning, huh?"

"Yeah, mostly thanks to you!" Tempest answered, a ghost smile lifting the corners of her mouth. "I said I'd buy and then you started feeding me drinks. You know I could hardly walk by the time we left?"

"But you had a good time. Especially when you and Letty decided to learn the fine art of stripping."

Leon laughed. "I thought Dom was gonna have a heart attack. But in that 'I'm so happy I could just die content right now' kinda way."

An incredulous frown wrinkled Tempest's brow. "Dom was pleased to see Letty get up and dance like a stripper?"

"Well," Leon thought a moment. "Not pleased, so much as very interested."

Tempest laughed. "Well, it was kinda fun, really. But athletic. I'd really never attempt it again unless I was sober."

"I'd just rather if the phrase ended 'I'd never attempt it again', thanks." Jesse added with a groan. "But watching Vince try not to watch was funny."

"There was no happiness in Vince for having to watch me do that."

"No, just a lot of jealous rage," Leon added with a chuckle.

"A lot of jealous rage he had no right to have," Tempest huffed and threw herself back into her seat with a frown.

"Again, you say those things, and then you sleep with him some more," Leon reminded with a touch of reproach in his tone.

"It turns out I'm stupid. Who knew?" she asked with a one shouldered shrug and a self depreciating smile. "'Sides, you guys sleep with inappropriate girls all the time. Why can't I sleep with inappropriate men?"

"No reason why not, if you were just sleepin' with them. It's the fact that you get in over your head with your feelings that I object to," Leon answered, making a show of concentrating on the road.

There were statements and questions on the tip of her tongue but she bit them down. Not with Jesse in the car. Leon was concerned about her feelings and what her involvement with Vince stood to do to them? How much of what they had done in his room the night previous had been out of his real feelings and how much had been out of the heat of the moment?

Leon glanced over at her, like he knew she was biting back something she wanted to say. His eyes darted to the rear-view and it was clear he got it, why she wasn't talking. Within another few moments they were pulling into the parking lot of the diner and parking the car. They piled out, some of their camaraderie restored by the thought of good food. They got a booth, menus and sat down to peruse them.

"Wanna get some movies to watch when we leave?" Jesse asked the table in general.

"That, some weed. One or the other."

Jesse looked at his cousin in shock. "You wanna smoke?"

She shrugged. "Why not?"

"You barely ever smoke up. That's why."

"I rarely ever totally fuck my own life either, but what're ya gonna do?"

"I have some in my room," Leon tossed out. "It's no thing, if that's what you wanna do."

"Settled then. There's a picnic table in the backyard right?"

"Yeah, why?" Jesse asked in confusion.

"Because we will sit outside, enjoy the beautiful night and get high, that's why. Now let's eat." Her demeanour showed that to her, the subject was closed, settled and decided. She went back to studying her menu.

Jesse and Leon shared a look. It was clear each thought the young woman sitting across from Jesse and beside Leon was slightly unbalanced. They also knew they were likely right, but that it was just how she was. She was just slightly more out there than ever, now that she had met Vince and put up with his moods, and flaws.

When the waitress came back Leon ordered, then Jesse. Finally when Tempest ordered she ordered a huge breakfast of pancakes and waffles with various toppings on them. And a large Pepsi to wash it all down.

"You're gonna eat all that?" Leon asked.

"No. Not likely. But I'm going to enjoy trying to eat some of everything, and trying to eat as much of it as I can."

"You asked for two different kinds of pancakes and three different waffles." Jesse couldn't get the look of shock off his face.

"Umhum," she answered absentmindedly. "What did you order?"

"A hamburger and fries."

"That's good."

"T, you ok?" Leon murmured into her ear.

"Fine, why?"

"You seem really spacey all of a sudden."

"Oh, well, I guess I am. But I'm fine. Seriously."

"Seriously?" Leon questioned.

"Seriously. Let's eat, and go home and just veg out."

"Just chill?" Jesse asked with a grin.

"Just be like broccoli."

"Corona?" Leon questioned.

"You may have as much Corona as you want. I wouldn't touch it if I were dying of dehydration in the desert and it was the only liquid there to drink."

Before Leon could answer her, their food arrived.

By the time they were done eating, all the food was gone. Jesse and Leon helped with the vast amount of breakfast Tempest had ordered herself and all that they left behind were some puddles of syrup on the tabletop.

"We goin' straight home?" Tempest asked Leon on the way back to the car.

"Unless there's somewhere else you wanna go," he answered.

"Not really. What about you Jess?"

"Nope, nothing comes to mind."

"Home it is then." She sighed. When Leon parked the car in the driveway a few minutes later she sighed again, in relief. The Maxima was gone which meant she wouldn't be avoiding Vince for the first while they were home, at least. She strutted into the house, nose in the air. Damned if she was being nice to Mia, either.

Since Mia was watching TV in the living room, it would have been hard for Leon to miss the nervous, scared look on her face when Tempest walked into the house. It also would have been hard to miss the hostility rolling off Tempest in waves. He looked between the rapidly retreating back of Tempest and the shocked face of Mia a few times. He held his arms out to his sides, palms up in the universal gesture of 'what the fuck?' Mia simply shrugged in answer, unwilling to explain what she, and Vince, had done. Leon looked back at her, clearly not buying her implication she had no idea what the damage was.

By the time Leon caught up with Tempest she was in the backyard with a four pack of coolers, laying in the grass pulling one of them down like water.

"What the fuck is goin' on around here now?" he growled.

"Nothin'. We're gonna veg in the backyard right?"

"Ok, sure. But why are you pissy with Mia?"

"I'm not pissy with Mia," she said, looking up at him from her prone position in the grass. "Why would I be pissy with Mia?" she growled sarcastically, a sneer twisting her face expressively.

"That's my question. You're a pretty good liar, but you're not very good at hiding your anger. And you were very angry with Mia just now."

"I'm not angry with Mia. I'm just fed up and I just wanna lay here in the cool grass with my coolers and chill. Is that so wrong?"

"No T, it's not," Jesse answered from someplace beyond Leon. He walked over to his cousin, sat beside her and popped the top off a Corona before shooting a look at Leon that clearly said 'let it go'.

Leon gave up with a sigh, took one of the ice cold beer for himself and plopped on the lawn on the other side of Tempest. They managed to joke and chat until eleven, just drinking sociably and being friends. Eleven was when Jesse gave up and went to bed.

"Ok, so now that Jess is gone, you're gonna tell me what the fuck happened between you, Mia and Vince that fucked you up so bad before supper."

She sighed. "Do I have to?" she whined.

"Yeah, you have to."

"Ok." She took a bracing breath and blew it out through her nose. "Last night, Vince didn't meet me in the hallway and start a conversation."

"Oh no?" Leon asked.

"No. He happened to look down the hall to the bathroom as he was standing at the bar, saw some guy with his hands all over me and came down the hall to tell me off for daring to pick up someone else on the night I dropped him."

"You did what?" Leon roared.

"Shut up fool!" Tempest looked around to ensure Leon's roar hadn't brought the rest of the house running. They never had heard the sound of the Maxima returning home, so she was sure she wasn't going to be dealing with Vince any time soon. But that didn't go for Dom, Mia or Letty. "I said he saw some guy with his hands on me, not that I was an active participant. This dude grabbed me when I left the bathroom and pushed me into the wall. I was too drunk to get him off. When Vince realized that I wasn't exactly willing to be where I was," she paused with a shudder, remembering both the feeling of the other man's hands and mouth on her skin, and the look of pure rage on Vince's face. "Let's just say Vince was almost on the run from a murder one charge."

"What did he do to the guy?"

"Threatened his life if he ever came around again."

"And that's it? He didn't hit him or cut him or throw him into solid objects?"

"No. I think he knew I just wanted the whole situation over. That I didn't want the guy around me any longer than he had to be."

"Why didn't you tell us?"

Leon seemed mildly annoyed and it was pretty much the strongest angry reaction she had ever seen out of him. She shrugged. "Didn't seem to be much point. What could any of you have done? Like I told Vince, if we weren't gonna call a cop and report it for assault or whatever the fuck, there wasn't much point ruining everyone's night. Nothing really happened. Vince scared him off in time. And I'll never, ever drink to the point I can't use the skills I learned—in case I ever found myself in that situation in the first place, for fuck's sake—again."

"So that's why you were ok with Vince again. Because he played Knight to your Damsel?"

"No, it wasn't. Not really. It was more because he respected my wishes not to tell you guys and came up with a believable story. That and the way he clearly wanted to kill that guy for daring to touch me like that went to my head, I guess."

"But then what happened? I mean, you slept with him last night, and then this evening you hate him again."

"I didn't sleep with him last night. We were both too tired. It was funny, really. We were going to and then it was like, 'we can just sleep.' And then it was like, 'yeah that'd be ok, sleep.' It wasn't anything I ever expected Vince to admit he was ok with," she said on a chuckle. "I fucked him this afternoon when I woke up. And then we came upstairs to go get something to eat and Mia looked at us like we were dirt because I guess she knew what we'd just done. And I just got the feeling she was jealous of the fact that Vince and I had been doing what we were doing."

"No way. That ship's sailed. She has no interest in being with Vince. Trust me."

"I do, and I know she doesn't. But in that moment? Just in that moment, when she saw that I was happy and likely when she heard just how happy the two of us were? She thought about changing her mind."

"Come on Gorgeous. Be serious."

"I am being serious! How do you figure I got out of the kitchen without Vince if they weren't so wrapped up in staring at each other they didn't notice me walk out of the room?"

Leon sighed, an agitated sound. "I don't know," he finally admitted. He turned his head to the side to look at the profile of the woman in the grass beside him. "I don't know."

"I'm an idiot. Seriously. I have the IQ of a horsefly. And all I keep coming back to is that I just want to slap her and kick the shit outta him."

"Now Gorgeous, be serious. Mia you could take. I mean, you'd kill her. But Vince would snap you in half like a dry twig."

"Don't count me out so fast, Leo. I can take care of me."

She sounded really confident. He was really worried she'd try some shit with Vince out of her anger and end up hurt. He tried to wrap his head around how to make sure she didn't ever get herself in over her head with his hot-headed friend. Well, she thought Vince a great deal tougher than him, right? So if he showed her she couldn't even hold her own against him, she'd know she couldn't stand a chance against Vince, wouldn't she? "On your feet, green eyes."

"What are you up to?" she asked, her eyes narrowed into slits of suspicion.

"I'm gonna show you that you couldn't even hold your own with me. Now, on your feet."

She did as he asked, standing up out of the grass with the aid of the hand he offered her. "We're gonna fight?"

"Yeah."

"Rules?"

"Just defend yourself against me. If you can."


	35. Of Swordplay and Being Tricky

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Thirty Five – **Of Swordplay and Being Tricky**

**AN: On the subject of being tricky :D it's come to my attention that people don't know this story exists because they don't know they need to change the ratings to show them the M stories. Thus, in a tricky move of my own, I've changed the rating of the story to T for this one chapter. This chapter doesn't require the M rating :D. I'm doing this solely to perform the public service of advising people that if, and only if, they wish to read all the stories in the category, they need to set the rating to _All_ at the top so they can see, well, all the stories. :D There is M rated content in the story, so be warned that some chapters are M. But if you want to read the story anyway, now you all know it's here. I'll change the rating back with the next chapter…On with the story.**

"Ok, you asked for it." Tempest cracked her neck and her knuckles before taking a fighting stance. Leon started her way and she circled him warily, unsure what his plan of attack was going to be.

Leon made a grab for her arm, where it was held out in front of her face, hand coiled into a properly made fist, he noted. He felt his hand close over her slender wrist, but just as he perceived her arm in his grasp, it was gone again and her other fist was glancing off his chin hard enough for him to see stars. He took a good look at how she was holding herself as he shook the mild cobwebs out of his head. "So, what style do you practise?" He wondered why he didn't pick up on it sooner. He could normally pick the people who did any sort of martial art out of a crowd just by their posture and how they walked. He could only surmise he'd attributed the confidence of her gate to her ability to handle herself around a garage full of uncouth men.

"'Scuse me?"

"Martial arts. Why style, what level?"

"Third brown, and that's all you need to know." She smirked with her admission.

"That's a hell of a right hook you got there."

"I know. You wanna keep this up?"

"Yeah, you still can't take me. Not now that I know what I'm up against."

"Ok, bring it on then? Really bring it?"

"You wanna go full contact, both ways? You spar enough for that? That I won't end up really hurting you?"

"I'ma let you find out the hard way." With a frustrated glance at Vince's baggy undershirt, which she was still wearing, she pulled it off over her head. She knew she couldn't be as agile as she would need to be, now that she had a better idea how skilled Leon was, with a baggy shirt getting in her way. With an appreciative look at her midriff, left bare as she now stood in a pair of low cut gym shorts and a sports bra, Leon pulled his own baggy basketball jersey off over his head and tossed it with her top.

They circled each other again, each watching the other for some tell when a strike was about to be unleashed. Tempest laughed at the situation. There was something decidedly unwholesome about two friends trying to beat each other up in the moonlight, each half naked and barefoot in the grass. She made the next move, attempting a side thrust kick into Leon's gut. His arm quickly moved into an inside block and deflected her movement. In a quick second motion, he wrapped his other hand around her ankle and held her foot captive against his stomach before she could snap her foot back and follow through.

Her eyebrow rose. "Same questions, names reversed."

"Second black, and that's all you need to know." It was his turn to smirk. His thumb caressed the skin over her ankle bone absently. He saw and felt the hitch in her breathing. He was starting to breath a little heavy himself. His smug smile intensified.

The smirk was quickly wiped off his face when she allowed his hold on her ankle not only to stand, but to be the pivot point for her next move. She launched herself up and over, putting her weight on his hand and allowing her other foot to leave the ground, her kick colliding with his jaw as she flipped over in mid air, connecting with a crack. Though not as hard as she would have been able to land it, he guessed. He and his still unbroken—thanks to her pulling her kick's power he was sure—jaw, were grateful to her for the gesture. But not enough to let her get away with it.

She landed badly. The move was above her skill level, but had been the only thing she could think to do with her foot trapped in his hand. He used her faulty landing as a point of power and grabbed her, pulling her back into his chest, her back to his front. He pinned her arms at her side by wrapping one of his leanly corded arms around her just under her breasts. He knew he had her pinned and figured he was safe from her retaliations. He lowered his head and stopped with his lips beside her ear. "So now what, Gorgeous?" She didn't answer. Since she seemed content to stand there for the time being, he used his position to take a look down her top with a grin that just screamed 'I'm a bad boy but you love me anyway." Unable to help himself he used his free hand to stroke over her exposed left hip bone. "You know what you need here?"

"A bo staff?" she asked cheekily.

"You couldn't beat me, even with a bo staff. You couldn't beat me with a Katana. But that's beside the point." He ran his fingers lightly over her hip again. "I mean here, literally right here on your hip. Do you know what you need?"

She turned her head so his lips were no longer right beside her ear, but right in front of her mouth instead. "No, tell me." She licked her lips.

Remembering his train of thought took some effort. "A tattoo."

"Really? Right there on my hip? Not on the small of my back or the back of my hip? Right there on the front?"

"You, with a tat on the small of your back? No way. Do you know what guys call those Gorgeous? The tramp stamp. No, you don't need one there. You need one right here on this hip." He tripped his fingers over the bone in question again. Her lean body begged for ink, in his opinion.

"Of what?" They were playing a dangerous game, and she wasn't referring to the Karate. She shivered slightly as his breath slid against her lips.

"Why, the Shotokan Tiger of course." He gave her a little one sided smile. It grew when her face gave away her shock at his correct guess. "It's appropriate. And when that one's healed, next," he turned himself away from her slightly and his free hand slid over the skin of her nape, "a storm cloud with a lightning strike right here." His fingers played over the bones of her spine from her nape to the small of her back before dancing across the back of her hip, over the curve and back around to tease the spot on the front of her lower abdomen he had been bringing into question.

"Leo?"

He almost hated himself for liking the thready tone of her voice. He knew he was walking a stupid line with her but he just couldn't help himself. It wasn't fair that Vince had gotten to her first. Not when he started to see that perhaps her relationship to Jesse wasn't enough to stop him from wanting her too. "Yeah?" he replied gruffly.

"You did say I could do whatever I needed to defend against you, right?"

"Yeah," he replied.

"Sorry," she said right before she slammed one of her feet down onto the instep of one of his. He let her go with a yelp of pain. She whipped around and resumed fighting stance.

"You're tricky," he grunted, fighting the urge to rub his aching foot.

"So're you."

He agreed with a slight incline of his head. He knew as well as she did that neither of them was strictly referring to their martial arts dance. They resumed circling each other warily. Now there was an added overtone of sexual awareness overlying the definite awareness of the physical danger each was obviously able to bring.

Leon kicked at her, aiming for her stomach level. She countered with a downward block and sidestepped his move only to retaliate with a punch directed at his stomach. He caught her wrist so fast she never saw it coming and squeezed hard enough to force her clenched fist to open. He wanted to press her open hand over his crotch so she could feel what their dangerous play was starting to do to him, but he restrained himself. He settled for pressing her palm over his thudding heart. "Surrender yet?"

With a shake of her head, she kicked up. She let him keep her hand pinned where it was as the ball of her foot connected with his cheekbone hard enough to make him roar.

He released her hand so quick it almost upset her balance, only to grab her ankle again and hold her leg steady on his shoulder. She was almost doing the splits standing and didn't seem in any way unhappy about it. He cocked an eyebrow. "You're pretty flexible."

"You don't know the half of it," she retorted with a secretive little smirk.

"What I do know has me very intrigued already. Show me more."

"Well, to show you too much more I'll need that sword you were talkin' about. I'm very dangerous with a Katana. Which begs the question, got a sword you wanna lend me to play with, Leon?"

His hand tripped from her ankle to smooth her calf, before his fingers teased the soft skin on the back of her knee. "Maybe. Depends on if we're done fighting or not."

"Not by half," she grinned.

"Then swordplay'll have to wait."

She pouted. "You scared I'm better with a sword than you are?"

"No. I know you got more skills with a sword than me. You gotta have more practise than I do." He smirked.

She took her foot back. Not swiftly, but slowly, and careful to ensure that her foot trailed over his lean chest, and toned abs. With an evil smirk, she allowed it to slide over his hip, very close to the area he had been hinting at with all his talk of swordplay. She lowered her foot to the grass after her toes tripped around his kneecap. "I can only observe that I've landed far more techniques than you. Whatever style you practise, it must be far easier to get black belts than it is in mine."

"You really do have one fuckin' hell of a smart mouth."

"Never denied it."

"I don't want to hurt you Temp."

She caught his double meaning. He didn't want to break her bones, but there was more to it than that. "You won't. I told you I could take care of myself and I meant it."

They circled each other again, watching for the slightest hint of weakness. Leon kicked out at her, aiming for her stomach but she sidestepped him easily. He punched, aiming for her chin but she deflected his arm over her head with a rising block. "You're not half bad."

"I know." She tried to hook one of his legs out from under him and trip him onto his ass.

He stumbled backward, trying to keep his footing. When he realized he was going down on his back he did the only thing he could think to do. He grabbed her waist on his way down and pulled her down with him. She landed on his chest with a startled gasp. "That was dirty."

"So was tripping me."

"Tripping's an official move."

"Still sneaky." He brushed a piece of hair that had come loose from her messy bun behind her ear. "Can we mutually surrender now? I believe you when you say you can hold your own, ok?"

She rested her suddenly tired head on his shoulder. "I guess so, if you're willing to admit I can keep up with you." She draped her arm over his stomach.

"Oh, I think you could keep up with me and then some," he told her with a naughty smile.

"I know I could."

"I really should take you up on that challenge and see if you really can."

She off his chest and away from him with a put out sigh. "Not tonight Le. Not until I'm more sure of things."

Leon crawled up out of the grass. As the adrenaline of the situation started to wear off, he was feeling the aches in his chin and cheek from her kicks. He was out of practice, he mused with a small frown. That, and he shouldn't have gone quite so easy on her just because she was a female. She was pretty much able to hold her own in a fight, sober at least. "I understand." He reached a hand down to help her up out of the grass before he replaced the chunk of hair which had fallen in her face behind her ear again. "I don't know what I think I'm doin' in the first place here Gorgeous, but I can't seem to help myself from makin' the offer. But I'm no more sure what's right than you are."

She didn't know what to say to him. It was good to know they were both confused. But frustrating to want something she didn't know if she should want. Wasn't sure she did want. "I think I should go to bed. Night," she reached up and kissed his cheek softly. "And thanks for the," a smile played across her face as she waved a hand to encompass the backyard, "distraction. And the workout. I needed it."

"You're welcome. See you in the morning."

"Night," she answered before turning and walking toward the house, dragging her bare toes through the grass.

Leon watched her go before walking down the driveway toward his car. He was far too keyed up to go to bed just yet, one am and just having fought hard for half an hour or not. A sixth sense he knew better than to ignore brought him back a short time later.


	36. Of Last Straws and Second Place

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Thirty Six – **Of Last Straws and Second Place Substitutes**

** AN: There is a lot of swearing in this chapter. Also, after this chapter, I'm a little unsure if I'm going to leave what I've written alone, or rework it based on some comments I've recieved. If I rework it, it'll mean changing a great deal of the story, as the next hundred pages are already written. And I don't mind doing it, if I end up feeling it's what's right for the story. So I might need to do some rereading, some thinking, and perhaps some revamping. So the next update might not come as fast as this one did. And I can't really ask for opinions without giving away some major occurrances of the story, so I guess I'm on my own this time. Comments are gratefully accepted. Always, T  
**

Tempest let herself in the back door of the house, glad to find that if nothing else, Mia had been smart enough not to lock her out in the back yard. She stood in the darkened kitchen trying to remember where the light switch was. She figured she could either turn the light on or try to stumble and feel her way down the basement stairs in the dark.

And some sane part of her was clamouring for her to sleep on the upstairs couch. She didn't know if it was to keep her out of Vince's room, or out of Leon's, or out of which ever one grabbed her first's room. She was very confused about who and what she wanted.

"What the fuck was that?" a low, angry voice growled from the dark corner beside the kitchen window before the light over the sink was snapped on.

She jumped into the air with a startled gasp. "Vince! What the hell are you doing hiding in the pitch black kitchen?" And when had he gotten back from where ever he'd been, and why hadn't she heard his car?

"Watching you and Leon. And again, what the fuck was that?"

"Me'n Leon fighting, sparring. He said I couldn't hold my own against him in a fight and I told him he was wrong. He told me to prove it so I did."

"You want me to believe that was fighting?"

"I don't care what you believe," she said and the expression on her face seemed to say that she really didn't care what he thought.

"But yet, when I ask you what that was, you tell me fighting. So you would have me believe that it was fighting?"

"It was Karate. Well, at least I assume Leon learned some form of Karate. That's what I was using. So yes, it was fighting."

"It was fuckin' foreplay!" Vince roared, finally at the end of his tether for hearing her deny there was more than she and Leon testing each other's knowledge of Martial Arts in what he'd seen.

"Lower your damn voice," she admonished with a growl.

"I will not be told to lower my voice. One of my best friends! And I come home to," he seemed to choke on his words, but forced himself to soldier on. "I come home to apologize to you, after feeling like shit for what I did all night to find you and Leon involved in some sort of bizarre prelude to fucking that you're trying to pass off as fighting. I've seen Leon fight in competitions for whatever the fuck it is he does, and not once have I seen him haul someone against his chest and whisper stuff in their ear. Never once seen him rub his hands over their hips and backs. I've never seen anyone practically rub his dick with their foot during this 'sport' he does." Vince was clearly incensed. "Sure didn't take you long to decide to move on. It was what, about four hours since we finished when you started with him?"

Tempest hated herself for feeling guilty he'd seen. So what if he'd seen? He didn't have the right to be jealous and he didn't have the right to be mad. What but foreplay was his staring at Mia so intently that he missed her leaving the room and leaving the house? "You don't get to imply I'm a whore. You, who've slept with so many different women you can't count them. You, who will sleep with me tonight if I'll let you—hate me or not, and then tell me all about how much you love someone else tomorrow morning. You, who fucked me in one minute and tried to mentally convince another girl to do the same with you in the next. You, who ripped my favourite shirt off my body this evening before having wild, crazy sex with me for an hour before enjoying letting me dress in your clothes only to come up stairs and get so wrapped up in another woman you didn't notice me walk out on you. No, when you are only the third guy I've ever taken to bed in my whole life, and you have no idea how many women you've fucked and kicked out of your room, you don't get to call me that, or imply that's what I am. Nothing gives you that right! You never promised me anything permanent, so don't act like you did and don't act like I'm breaking some sort of commitment I made to you either. We never made promises to each other and that was how _you_ wanted it."

"I have to live with him long after you leave," Vince added in a much more calm tone of voice.

"Please," Tempest drawled sarcastically, unable to buy that line of logic for why he was so mad she had fooled around in the backyard with Leon. He was jealous! He felt like because he'd had sex with her, he had some right of ownership over her. It had nothing to do with Leon being his friend, and everything to do with how he just didn't want to share his 'toys'. She'd bet he was like that with every girl he slept with. But it was one more thing she wasn't going to allow him to just get away with. "You never have to live with Craig Everett, but I wasn't even allowed to _talk_ to him without you pitchin' a fit. But I guess me'n him talkin' cars was foreplay too, was it? I mean, I'm clearly such a whore that I can't talk to a guy, or play fight with a guy, without it being a prelude to sex. _I'm_ not the person in this room who's been ridden to victory more times than Dominic's car!" Her voice rose sarcastically as she quipped out her anger.

Any pretence of calm flew out the window then. "What did you say?"

"Now you're deaf and dumb for real? You heard me," she muttered angrily. "Don't try to make it my fault that you think you mark your territory when you fuck a girl and then you think no one else has the right to talk to her, touch her. You using me for sex didn't ever turn me into your property."

Vince took an angry step her direction. She held her ground defiantly, chin in the air, uncaring if the next few moments would find her and Vince in the backyard throwing punches without the overtone of sexual play. She was more than ready to take out her anger and frustration on something.

Leon fought down his need to laugh hysterically at her line. _Ridden to victory more times than Dom's car!_ She had a quick wit. But a sharp tongue. And it was about to get her in serious shit. Leon couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Vince so very mad. He was very worried that Tempest had pushed the volatile Vince right over the edge of sanity with her insult. He watched Vince take a second step her way. He had to do something before one of them did something they couldn't take back.

"Temp?" he called softly as he moved into the room and stood near the top of the stairs. "Come on baby girl. Let it go, both of you."

"You!" Vince's head came around with a snap before he pointed at Leon. "I haven't even started with you yet."

Leon caught the hesitation on her face when Tempest turned her head to look at him. She wasn't sure if she should go to him, or stay and force Vince to fight her some more. He knew he couldn't let the latter happen. "Come on baby. Come with me. It's time to go to bed. Everyone can talk more rationally in the morning." He watched as she turned his way. "That's it Temp. Let's go." He held his hand out to her. She looked from him to Vince and back again.

"No," she answered Leon's request. "I'm not going to drag this up again tomorrow, so it ends tonight. I know you don't believe me, but I'm thinking quite clearly." She turned back to Vince. "Let's get one thing straight. I am done with you. Finished. From this moment onward if I want to have sex with _Dom_ in the middle of the alley at the next night of races it is _no_ business of yours. Letty may feel free to yell, scream, kick my ass, whatever she would want to do. But you? You will _smile_ and _like_ it because it will not concern you. I am _through_ with being treated like a race skank. I will no longer let good sex be a reason for me to allow myself to be treated badly. To be treated like I don't count and I don't matter. Because I do, on both fronts, but clearly not to you. So now, _you_ are not worth _my_ time. If you wish to ruin what's left of your life wishing on stars for something you'll never have, be my guest. I will _not_ allow myself to join you there."

"I messed-"

"Up, yes I've heard it before. Far too many times for a one week relationship that wasn't even supposed to be all that serious in the first place. I just refuse to be _that_ girl. I will not be that girl who puts up with being ignored or worse just to say they have someone in their life. I didn't have anyone when I got here, I won't have anyone when I leave and if I don't have anyone in the mean time, that's just how it's gonna be."

"You can't expect me to change my whole life around for you when you're only gonna be in it for such a short amount of time. You're the one who says you won't move here. Not for years. You're the one who said all you were looking for was to have some fun while you were here. You can't expect me to rearrange my whole existence for something that won't be anything but temporary."

"Maybe not. And I never asked you to. Not that you gave me any indication you would even if I did ask, but I didn't ask you to make any big changes. All I asked for was a little respect, and you couldn't even give me that. But I'm a _good_ person," she answered. Her voice took on a pained sound as she spoke. "I'm kind and loyal and smart and funny and brave. I, despite my attitude problem, generally care about the world around me and the people in it. I have awareness of how my actions effect others and try not to do anything myself that will hurt innocents. I am cognizant of the feelings of other people and, even if it is slightly inconvenient for me, will try to spare their feelings when I can avoid hurting them. I don't deserve to have my nose rubbed in the fact that you really want someone else not me every minute of every day. Not when you seem happy enough to pretend otherwise when it gets you the only thing you really care to have from me. In my pants." She looked at Leon instead of Vince when she paused. "I'm a good person." She fought down a hysterical laugh or sob, she wasn't quite sure which. "I'm a _good_ person."

"I know you are Gorgeous." Leon spared a look at Vince, who, at this point, looked rather shell shocked instead of angry. Leave it to Tempest to start the fight, decimate her opponent, and walk away the victor, all with nothing more than some hastily chosen words and no knowledge of the battle. Against Vince, of all people! "Come on baby girl. You made your point." Leon extended his hand out to Tempest again. He was glad when this time; she crossed the room to his side and took it to let him lead her down the stairs. He shot Vince a dirty look before he dropped from sight.

"Are you crazy?" Leon growled as he pushed Tempest into his room.

"No, what?"

"Trying to get him to fight you? On purpose? Have you lost your mind? We covered this!"

"I was just standing up for myself! I thought it was what you wanted. When you were so upset with me every time I talked to him again, I thought you wanted me to tell him no. To tell him to leave me alone. To stop being with him."

"Stand up for yourself, sure." Leon paced as he attempted, and succeeded for the moment, to keep his temper in check. "Fuckin' taunt him to the edge on purpose? No, I never wanted you to do that. Damn it Temp. I know you're angry and hurt by the whole thing, but use some of the common sense I know you have."

"I didn't try to push him to the edge on purpose, Leon. Shit! Give me some credit," she practically roared back at him. "I can't help it if he pushed me first and I pushed back. I mean, when did you start hearing the conversation, anyway?"

"When you told him he didn't get to call you a whore."

"So you missed the part where he told me that," she sighed, scraping her hair back off her face. She didn't want to continue. "He saw everything, Leon. Everything."

Leon stopped pacing to run a hand through his hair. "Fuck. What'd he say?"

"That I had no right to fuck around with one of his best friends."

"That was all he had to say?"

"Yeah, that it didn't take me long to move on and that I didn't have the right to do it with one of his best friends that he'd have to live with long after I was gone."

"Ok, I still say you can't fight him. That doesn't go for me. You stay put right here and I'll be back when I'm done trying to kick some sense into his head." Leon turned on his heel for the door.

"Leon, no," she called after him.

"I know you think I can't take him. And god knows I went so easy on you I guess I gave you reason to think that way. But I _can_ take him, I _will_ take him, and when I'm done at least some order's gonna be resorted around here."

"I don't want you to fight him over this. It's not worth it. I knew for a long time I was messin' with fire. I got burned. No harm, no foul. Just go get my stuff outta his room before he comes down here."

"After what he said to you?"

"It's not that big a deal. I got mine in return. Besides, we all have to play at being one big happy family for the next week, and if we can't do a good enough job because you and he aren't speaking either, it'll just upset Jess. So let it go, go get my stuff, and let's just put it in the past, ok?"

"Gorgeous, you just basically told me he called you a slut. You want me to just put that in the past?" Leon's tone was incredulous.

"Yeah, I do. I think me pointing out he's way worse of a slut than I'll ever be probably worked good enough to drive the point home he was outta line there. 'Sides, he's right. I did tell him there was nothing anyone could say or do to convince me to stay here permanently right now. So he's got a point. No matter what he said or did I wasn't going to be a fixture of his life."

"So what? That didn't give him the right to treat you like shit just to make himself feel better about the fact you wouldn't chose him over whatever it is that you think has to drag you back home for two years. And don't kid yourself! This whole thing is way less about Mia and some stupid school kid crush he has on her and way more about the way it makes him feel that you keep saying that you won't stay here no matter what. Which means he's not enough of a draw, no matter how you feel about him, to make you change your mind. That, and he likes you, like I already told you, and he's scared of how much."

Why did Leon have to go and put it like that? She tried hard not to feel bad, but it was a struggle when Leon basically put it on her. Vince was use to coming in second. Second to Dom, second best. Second choice to Mia; there was always someone just a little bit better—in her opinion, in any event—than Vince for her affections. And even though she had felt something very strong for him, something she had mused might be the beginnings of love—for crying out loud—she hadn't even been willing to put him before her pride. Her pride dictated she had to finish her licence before she could call herself accomplished in her field. Her pride said she had to be as good as everyone else and prove it, not just know it. Her pride wouldn't let her admit she really liked him enough to think about changing her mind. Her pride wouldn't let her basically beg him to chose her. Pride, pride, pride. _You would have had to make all the first steps Temp, and you know it!_ she told herself. _You would have had to tell him you changed your mind, you would have had to move here without a commitment from him. He never would have told you he wanted you to. He never would have asked. You would have to get used to being the one coming second for a very long time before he would ever learn to put you first. Could you deal with that? _she asked herself, playing her own devil's advocate. _No_, she answered her own question, _but pride still cometh before the fall. _"Thank you Leon! Just what I needed." She turned some of her self anger on Leon. "Thank you for putting how he treats me back on me."

"I didn't say that Temp."

"Oh, really? Than what was pointing out to me that I just put Vince as second best to my career, just like most people around here stick him behind something else in importance supposed to make me think?"

Leon ran a hand through his hair. "I didn't think you'd see it like that. And it's not like Vince doesn't go out of his way to make people see that the easiest way to deal with him is to let him slip out of focus. He likes it that way. He didn't treat you good, and nothing gave him an excuse for that."

"But he did treat me good." She caught the look Leon sent her way. "Ok, he didn't treat me good all the time. But a lot of the time he did. I mean, don't you have to cut him some slack, given that he's never really be required to treat a girl well. Does he really even know how?"

"The last thing I want you doing is starting to sympathise with him. He might not have a lot of experience with having girlfriends, not just girls around him, but he has the same inherent idea how to treat people that everyone else does. He knew enough to know he hated it when you talked to other guys, looked at other guys. Shouldn't he figure out you'd feel the same way?"

"But I don't!" Leon gave her a look, fully telling her he didn't buy her statement. "Seriously!" she continued. "I don't mind when a guy I'm with looks at other girls or talks to other girls. I'm not jealous of a guy enjoying the look of another girl. I mean, just because he's with me doesn't mean he's dead. I expect to be allowed to check out other guys too. As long as looking is all it is, and it doesn't turn into forgetting all about my existence over it, I don't care."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really. I mean, would it bother you if we were out together and I watched a guy walk by before I went back to talking to you?"

"Not so much. Not if it was just a casual thing."

"Well, that's how I look at it. I wouldn't care if he wanted to check out girls. Hell, I'd join him half the time. I have nothing against pointing out pretty girls. But he doesn't stop at checking them out. And when I check a guy out, just because he's there, he goes crazy. The whole double standard thing drives me mad!" _But you do kinda like it when he gets jealous_, the little voice inside her head reminded. _Will you_ shut_ up_!

"You're starting to get off topic anyway," Leon said. Her rambling couldn't help but make him smile.

"And you still haven't gone to get my stuff."

"If you promise me, and I mean swear, that you'll still be here when I get back with it, then I'll go get your stuff."

"I'll still be here waiting when you come back. I promise. As long as you promise all you're gonna do is go get my things and come back here."

He agreed with a sigh. "I promise."

"Ok then."


	37. Of Fragility and Favourite Mistakes

AN: Ultimately I decided to leave things with the story as they stand. I think it works the way it is, and I like it. Some people won't. If enough people don't, and tell me about it in a way that makes it resonate, then I'll rework it in revisions. For now, the drama works, and it gives me something to play off later. Besides, we've all been young and made bad choices. Or at least, I was and I did. Grin The quote under the chapter title is from Wasted Youth, by Meatloaf, and definitely dates my age, Grin Enjoy. (Oh yeah, and this chapter was edited down, which is why parts of it might not make sense and why the story is again rated M.)

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Thirty Seven – **Of Fragility and Favourite Mistakes**

"**A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age."**

Leon left his room, and closed the door behind himself for good measure. He knew it wouldn't keep her put if she didn't want to let it, but the gesture made him feel better. He walked into Vince's room, careful to check around the door to make sure Vince wasn't in the room first. Seeing the coast was clear he walked in turned on the light. Her stuff wasn't hard to find, at least, he mused as he started stuffing the clothes that had overflowed onto the floor back into her bags. When he was finished he stood up and hooked the straps of her bags over his shoulder before looking around the room to see if he missed anything. He found a shirt that looked like it must belong to her over on the other side of the room and moved to pick it up.

When he did, he realized there wasn't much sense giving it back to her. She'd never wear it again. It was too torn to even be called clothes any more. It was more or less only good for a rag by this point. Feeling like he should have a light bulb suddenly light up over his head, Leon realized what happened to the shirt. He wasn't sure how he felt about his realization. But it did confirm that for Tempest at least, the torn shirt would likely just bring up bad memories, and was better off lost. With a mean smirk that he really wouldn't have thought himself capable of, let alone interested in enjoying, he tossed the ruined garment onto Vince's still disordered bed.

Let the tousled bed sheets and shredded female attire be a visual reminder to Vince what an idiot he was, Leon decided. Then, not liking the mean streak he found in himself, he left the room, closing the door after turning out the light. He walked back into his own room to find the very girl he was attempting to vindicate—despite that emotion not being one he would have attributed to himself until this very night—reclined in his bed flipping through one of his car magazines.

"Took you long enough," she told him with a smirk.

"You're a bigger slob than Jesse," he imparted by way of an answer. "I had to repack all your shit off the floor."

"No one is a bigger slob than Jesse," she retorted. "'Sides, I need to do laundry so there wasn't much point packing it all neatly."

Leon dropped her bags in the corner. "Sure didn't take you long to make yourself at home." He eyed the way she was sprawled across his bed.

"What was I supposed to do? Stand in the corner?" She cocked a brow. "Besides, it isn't like this is the first time I've been in your bed." Smirking, she continued, "there was yesterday morning, when you propositioned me to 'sit a little lower' and then last evening when you did things to me with chocolate that I'll never forget."

"You're a real champ to bring all that up when I'm here trying to do the right thing," Leon said.

She wasn't sure if he was serious or joking. Either way, he hadn't been the one trying to do the right thing in the backyard half an hour ago. He had no real leg to stand on in the 'I'm so innocent' routine. "Was that what you were doing when you were feeling me up in the backyard?"

"I hardly felt you up in the backyard," he growled, striding over to the side of his bed where she lay. "Trust me, if I'd felt you up, you wouldn't have walked away so easily. You'd still be out there beggin' me for more."

One slender, arched brow rose skyward at his statement. "You think you got skills enough to make me _beg_?"

"Yeah. What, you don't?"

"Nope. I think the beggin'd go the other way. You'd be beggin' me."

"Really? 'Cause, I'd really love to see _you_ make _me_ beg."

"Do you really wanna go here, Le?"

There was a secretive little smile lifting the corners of her mouth as she came up on her knees which almost scared him. The secret behind it was one of those womanly things they knew and wouldn't share that always spelled trouble for men, and he knew it. At his silence, she continued.

"Because I'd hate to humiliate you by making you beg for something you say you don't even really want."

Drawing on the experience of his past, Leon didn't think he had too much to worry about. Given the number of women who threw themselves at him—and every other guy on the team—every time Dom raced, and the number that _he_ didn't sleep with, no matter how 'nicely' they asked, surely he'd seen just about everything there was to see in the line of women trying to seduce a man. _And_ likely turned it down at least once. Besides, her dark hair, light complexion, barely there figure wasn't the kind of thing that normally turned him on in the first place. "Do I have to participate, or can I just sit at the end of the bed until I feel like begging?"

"You can just sit there and watch. But, you can't touch until you beg me for permission. Not one finger on any part of me until you beg for it. Got it?"

He forced himself to yawn, as if in boredom. "I got it."

"Ok." _Here we go_. Forcing her issues with what she was doing to the back of her consciousness she met Leon's eyes with what she hoped was a sultry look and ran a fingertip down her own stomach, stopping only to toy with the waist of her shorts. She was gratified to see his eyes definitely followed her finger's path. "I forget what I wore under these shorts," she said, forcing a giddy yet vapid look to her face. "Are you as curious as I am what's under here?" She pulled the material away from her lower body and peered down. "Oh yeah! I was all out of clean underwear so I just didn't worry about it."

"That all you got?" Leon asked, sounding bored.

His question checked her. Could she handle what it would do to her already very bruised ego and self esteem if he did manage to resist what she offered, no matter how she offered it? Deciding she could cross that bridge in a few moments if he was able to keep his hands to himself, she simultaneously turned her back to him and took the elastic out of her hair, freeing the curls to fall down her back and shield her body from view.

When he was spared from her gaze for a moment, he took a relieved breath. Resisting her innocent attempts at turning him on was way harder than resisting the practised overtures of the skanks he normally ran into. The way her hands slid over her own body showed clearly that she wasn't really all that sure what to do, but was just following her instincts. Which were very good, if he did say so himself. How Vince did anything that would jeopardize his ability to keep such an interesting girl in his life, he didn't know. Then he forced himself to stop thinking about the fact that Vince had had her first, and forced himself to start thinking about what she was doing while she had her back turned to him. Maybe the right thing to do would be to stop her now, tell her how hot he found her, but how wrong he found this on the day she'd had a huge, explosive fight with the man she might very well have been falling in love with and just put her to bed. _I always do the right thing! I wanna do the wrong thing for once. Vince had her but he didn't care. I'll care! I'll go out of my way to deserve her for the next week and that'll make it ok. Vince'll get over it. He couldn't have been all that into her or he wouldn't have done what he did._

He turned his attention to her just in time to see her pick the remote for his stereo up off the bedside table and turn on the radio. She flipped through the stations until she found one playing something to her liking. He really wished the something she stopped on wasn't 'Red Light Special'. She looked at him over her shoulder provocatively and smiled, one corner of her mouth lifting as she caught his eyes. And pulled her bra top off over her head before throwing it to the floor. Since her back was still turned to him, all he could see was her honey coloured skin peeking through the inky fire of her hair. Then she leaned over and picked the bottle of chocolate syrup off the floor before squeezing some out on her finger and licking it off, careful to keep her head turned to the side so he could see every detail.

"Want some?" she asked cheekily, over her shoulder.

He shook his head no.

"Suit yourself."

She squirted some of the sauce out and 'missed' her finger. He was quite sure that she had missed on purpose, because from the trajectory the stream had fallen at, he was sure it was now somewhere on the upper slope of her chest. And he had to admit he'd been very curious about just what her chest looked like since he'd almost gotten to see it the night before.

"Oops," she said, managing to sound contrite, even though the look on her face showed she knew just what she'd done.

Wondering if she was really about to turn around with Leon sitting right there while she wasn't wearing a top, she turned her head around to face the back wall of the room and squirted more chocolate on her finger before sucking it off while she contemplated her situation. What if he could still resist her while her chest was bare and had chocolate on it just begging to be licked off? But, and she thought this might be even more damaging.

What if he couldn't?

She wanted to shrug but she didn't. It was patently obvious, no matter how much they went out of their way to hide it from her, that they had passed girls around between them before. It wasn't like it was a first. And they certainly didn't turn down sex if they wanted it. It didn't seem to matter to them just who it was with. It sure didn't to Vince. So if she wanted to have sex with Leon tonight, did it really matter? At least this time it really was just sex. _So it's not to get back at Vince the only way you really see you can_? that nagging little voice of her conscious yelled. _So what if it is?_ her inner dialog continued. _It's not like Leon's likely to care if he gets laid out of it, and you likely flatter yourself if you think Vince'll care that much anyway. _She waited for a moment, waiting for her logical side to have an answer to her impulsive side's points. _So what are you waiting for then? Why hesitate at all if you're that sure? _She wasn't disappointed with herself. She had known her mind wouldn't let the topic rest that easily. _Is it that wrong for me to want a guy who'll just want me back? Who won't always have someone else on his mind?_ When, a second after she asked herself the questions, she hadn't had a smart aleck answer for them she took a deep breath and turned back around.

How he didn't tackle her to the bed and eat her alive when she turned back around with a dribble of chocolate sliding down her skin he didn't know. He hoped he still looked unmoved. He watched as she tossed her hair to the right and peeked at him from under her lashes. "Will you look at the mess I'm making?" she tsked. "I'm gonna have to be more careful with the rest of it." He watched as she put more chocolate on her finger and 'accidentally' missed again, causing a dribble to fall down the middle of her abs, headed toward her belly button. "Darn. I don't know why I'm such a slob tonight," she imparted to him with a sorry look he was sure was fake. And then she started to smear the chocolate on her stomach with her index finger as he watched, fascinated. He was equally caught up in the way she put her finger in her mouth and sucked it clean. She went squeeze the bottle over her finger once more.

_If he can still sit there with that unmoved look on his face after this, I surrender_, she told herself as she positioned the bottle for her 'last attempt'. If he could resist her past her next move, she was out of ideas and she'd just slink off with her tail between her legs and know she was just one of those easy to resist females that guys didn't mind turning down. She 'aimed' for her finger and watched as the dollop of chocolate 'missed' and landed on her skin instead, running down. It was a very overt move for her. "I'm so clumsy tonight," she said, forcing herself to purr even though she felt like she was about to die of mortification. He still wasn't moving. His face hadn't changed. Her head bowed forward and her hair moved to curtain her face as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath to prepare for her humiliating admission that she had nothing left. That she wasn't woman enough to take her shorts off and flaunt herself any farther in a hope of getting a little encouragement. She blew the first breath out and took a second one through her nose. Holding it she moved to open her mouth to surrender.

But she never got a word out. Before she could speak, she was being grabbed. "I'm sorry I didn't actually beg first, but I couldn't take any more," he muttered against her stomach, where he was busily cleaning up the rest of the mess she had made.

"I was about to give up," she said, her tone a whisper.

"What?" he questioned.

"I was about to declare myself obviously resistible in the extreme and go wash myself off."

With a final swipe of his tongue he finished cleaning off her belly before kissing his way back up her body. He really hadn't realized what a number Vince's callous treatment of her feelings had done on her. She was sexually inexperienced in the extreme compared to them. Which really didn't help the situation she found herself in. Having what she and Vince both called some very good, very hot sex in one moment, and then being forgotten in the next. She didn't know enough about guys and their motivations to see that if a guy like Vince had sex with her more than once, it was because she was doing something very right, not just because she was there.

Having heard enough of their sex life through the walls to know what it was like, he was sure they had never lingered over each other. So if she and he were going to make this mistake—and he ultimately had to know it would be a mistake—he knew that one thing he could certainly give her to take away from the experience was knowledge that she wasn't forgettable, or resistible, or bad in bed. And he had to guess from the faint marks still on her skin from Vince's last possession of her that she wasn't bad in bed. He brushed her eyes closed with his thumbs and kissed her gently. He smoothed her hair back from her face as he continued to kiss her slowly.

Somewhere in his mind, he knew it was bad that he was making sure to be so gentle with her so she wouldn't have any excuse to compare them together to her and Vince together, but he put it out of his mind. He wanted her worse than he wanted to be the good guy one more time, and he thought that she might just need someone to show her that she was easily as sexy as Mia, and that there wasn't something inherently wrong with her that made Vince treat her badly. And maybe that was just his own personal justification to get around the fact he knew what he was doing was wrong. But there was some merit to it too, justification or not. No one as young and currently vulnerable as Tempest deserved to be permanently damaged over some caveman's callus treatment of her.

He felt her fingers start to tangle in his hair and smiled against her lips. She tasted shy, he thought with a mental chuckle. But she was enjoying herself, if the way she was kissing him back was any indication. She was so sweet and innocent it was easy to forget that she was anything but when he heard her with his friend through the bedroom wall. He released her lips with some reluctance and brushed his lips over her cheek toward the delicate shell of her ear. She tipped her head to allow him better access, and at that surrender he allowed his hands to wander away from where they were tangled in her hair. He sucked at her neck just under her ear behind her jaw as his hands wandered. She moaned softly under his touch.

He was being so gentle and sweet that she couldn't find her voice to call a stop to what they were doing. She wanted what he was giving her very much. But she didn't want to ruin his relationship with his friend over it. But since she couldn't say no she just convinced herself that Vince would get over it. He'd hate _her_ forever, but he'd forgive Leon, given a few days without her around. And that was fine. It wasn't like she still liked Vince. Right?

She ran her fingers out of his hair and down across his shoulders, tracing the contours of his upper back. His weight felt comfortable over her. And even if she knew that comfortable wasn't something she normally would have associated with spectacular sex, perhaps she knew that comfortable and good was exactly what she needed to function as salve to her beaten self esteem. It wasn't like wild and mind blowing got her very far, in the long run. Ultimately it was different and different was what she needed. And then he kissed her again, and it didn't matter any more. She was just a girl, who was in bed with a boy, who needed the connection and to feel special, like someone cared about her. And the boy was delivering, and it was all that counted.

And afterward, if she was subdued, it wasn't because she was unhappy. Just introspective. And contented, as she lay cradled against him, her head tucked into the crook of his shoulder, his hands smoothing her hair as he crooned nonsense to her.

"You ok?" He was almost scared to ask. He felt like a complete cad for what he saw as taking advantage of her.

"Better than just ok."

"You sure?"

"I'm not laying here in a fit of regret while trying to think up a way to escape, if that's what put the worry in your voice," she commented lightly.

He chuckled softly. "That's good."

"Leon?"

"Um?"

"It could wait until tomorrow, I suppose, but we are going to have to talk about this."

He sighed. He'd known it was coming. And she was right. They did have to talk about it. "You're right. Up to you when."

"Well, the way I see it, we have a few options. I don't want you to think I regret what we did, because I don't. But I think we both know that it shouldn't have happened. Not tonight, and given the circumstances, likely not ever."

"But it did happen."

"I know, and like I said, I wouldn't take it back even if I could. But that doesn't make it any less complicated. So, from where I'm standing there are a few ways we can go. I honestly feel like you're a very good friend of mine. So, we wouldn't be the first friends to have some sort of friends with benefits comfort sex."

"Ok, point being?"

"Well, if we look at it that way, now we're even better friends. I don't think you can sleep with someone who's your friend and not end up either closer, or letting it get awkward and come between you. I don't want that to happen, so I think it'll just make us closer friends. So, really, it's no one's business but ours, we can just keep what happened between us, and, if it happens again in the future, that's what having a friend with benefits is all about."

"But I thought you said you didn't regret what happened."

"I don't. What makes you think I do?"

"Um, the fact you don't want anyone to know we slept together, I guess."

"Sarcasm doesn't suit you, Le. It isn't for me that I don't want people to know. It's for you, mostly. It's going to be angry and painful for Vince to find out about us Leon. It was hard enough when he just saw us flirting around. If he finds out we took that all the way, he's going to be very mad at both of us, but mostly you. Me, he can just hate forever. You, he has to live with for the foreseeable future. No matter how badly it went, and how unofficial it was, we were sorta dating so I'm his sorta ex. You and I shouldn't have hooked up if we didn't want to make it hard on the group as a whole. The others might frown on you and me for it, and I already feel like a huge slut. I don't have to have the rest of the world thinking I am one too.

"You're not a slut because someone hurt you badly and you turned to a friend for comfort."

"I know that, logically. But it's really too bad that feelings and thoughts aren't always logical."

He kissed her forehead. "Any other reasons why you're pushing for the option where we keep this to ourselves?"

"I'm not sure how Jess'll take it. He might be thrilled. But he might be upset and weird about it too."

He made a noncommittal noise. "There's one thing you haven't considered."

"What?"

"What if there was more to this than just sex for me?"

"Well, was there?"

"Maybe. The whole Vince, Jesse, you leaving never to return in a week thing has me kinda thrown, I gotta admit. Plus," he trailed to a stop with a sigh.

"Plus what?"

"There's the whole feeling I get that you're in love with V." There, he said it. He felt like a huge asshole for sleeping with her when he knew she was in love with another man, and reeling from the emotional slap in the face she'd been dealt, but now it was out there. She was silent for a few minutes. "You ok? I didn't piss you off, did I?"

"No, you just made me think. Now I feel bad," she said, unable to help the small laugh that escaped her.

"Why's that?"

"Because you think you have more than friendly feelings for me, I might very well have more than friendly feelings for Vince, and he's head over heels in love with Mia, who only kinda sorta wants him when she thinks he wants someone else. This is fucked up."

He joined her in her laughter. "I guess it is. When you put it like that, it does seem like the best thing to do is to just not mention the whys and wherefores of you spending the night in here. They'll all assume it was just because I wanted to keep you and Vince separate and we should likely just let them assume that."

"Unless we end up making this more than just what it was."

"If I asked you to stay here with me, on a permanent basis, would you do it?" he asked softly.

She thought about it. She figured that she owed him honesty, if nothing else. "Not now. I have something to prove, Leon. Not just to the world, because giving up on a chance to have a person like you in my life to prove something to some people that don't even really care about me would be stupid. But I have something to prove to myself too, and I think I have to do it or I'll always be wondering what if."

He spent a few moments of his own, thinking about what she had said. And because of how she put it, he couldn't fault her for it. "I think I understand. But, so I'm clear, we are still friends, right?"

"Yeah. So friendly that I'm gonna sleep right here in your bed and I'm not gonna bother getting up to put clothes on," she replied with a laugh that ended on a yawn.

"Then I guess I'll feel free to do the same."

"You do that. Night Le."

"Night Gorgeous."

She fell asleep quickly, obviously more settled by what had happened than she was upset. Sleep didn't prove so easy for him to find. His thoughts kept him up some time later, but he wasn't too bothered by it. He heard Vince stumble down just after Tempest started softly snoring, but he wasn't too worried about Vince. He had some answers, but he still had a lot of questions too. He didn't know what he was going to do about any of it, but figured that like so many other issues in life, it would just have to work itself out how it would.


	38. Of Recriminations and Going There

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Thirty Eight – **Of Recriminations and Going There**

_I'm a _good_ person_. As he sat on the picnic table in the back yard with a bottle of tequila in one hand her words chased each other around Vince's head repeatedly. The way she had said them, as if desperately trying to convince herself as well as the rest of them was impossible to forget. _Clearly I'm not_, he thought. No, he certainly wasn't. He was selfish and cruel. And now, the woman who he still, after everything, thought of as his was downstairs with his best friend. And she was right. From now on he would smile and—pretend at least—to like it, because it no longer concerned him. Because, in his confusion and uncertainty with the situation, he'd almost broken her. More than once. And he clearly didn't care all that much. After all, he'd done it again. After telling himself the first time was enough, he'd done it again. He'd seen the fact she was too good for him, and too good for the role he was thrusting her into in his life. But he'd not only let her stay there, he'd put her back there more than once.

He had been told to let well enough alone. He had been told not to go there in the first place. He had been told by the girl in question that every time he and she got together again, it hurt her just a little bit more. But yet, he'd taken advantage of her emotional state and taken her to his bed again. And then, he'd gone and allowed her to see how deep his infatuation with Mia still ran, again. She was a good person. He could see that. It wasn't that he couldn't. And maybe that was why he needed her to be his so badly—while he could have her. Because she was a good person who liked _him_. That didn't happen very often. And instead of being grateful, and making her the most important thing in his life for the short amount of time he could have her, he treated her like dirt. Instead of realizing he only had two weeks of actually getting to be someone's everything and treating the time and the woman like they were priceless, he squandered one and broke the other, time and time again. And, in the ultimate punishment imaginable, now the girl was with his best friend instead.

He didn't want to accept that he was going to allow her to sleep with Leon without a fight. He didn't want it to be true. He wanted to go and find her. He didn't particularly care if he had to go and pull her out from under Leon. He just wanted to go and find her and show her just how much she belonged in his bed. Just like she knew by instinct that things would not be as good for him with Mia as they were with her—in terms of the amount of fireworks the sex set off, in any event—he knew the same was true of what would be between she and Leon. Leon was far too easygoing for her. He was the epitome of easygoing. And that was the very quality that she herself had pointed out wouldn't work between her and a guy. If anyone would allow her to run roughshod over him, it was Leon. Their fight had proved it. Leon'd kept going easy on her and doing his best to turn her on and she'd kept on beating the crap out of him. He'd never have allowed her to continue landing blows past the first one. He'd have put her down and given her a far more interesting and beneficial activity to accomplish with her legs. Namely, wrapping them around his waist while he was deep inside her.

But it wasn't any of his business. Not anymore. So he took another swig of the amber liquid he was swilling down and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. This time, the second time she had told him she didn't want him, she wasn't taking it back. He wouldn't overlook her words this time, he reassured himself. He wouldn't let her drop him for the second time, in front of Leon none the less, and end up back with her. She'd made her decision, and if he had anything to say about it, this time she was sticking with it. And now, if he could just drink enough to make that decision start to sound fine and good, he'd be all set.

He put the bottle to his lips and started pulling the burning fluid down his throat like it was a beer, not hard liquor. He didn't stop until the bottle was empty. Ok, so forget about drinking enough to make the decision the right one. It wasn't going to happen. But he'd settle for drinking enough to just not have to think about it any more tonight. When he stood up, he almost fell over. He chuckled to himself, despite his rather morose mood. So this was what it felt like to drink over half a quart of the hard stuff in just under an hour, huh? He really couldn't recommend it, in terms of how it made your stomach feel. But in terms of the capacity it left you with to think about your problems, it was pretty effective. He stumbled into the house, knocked over one of the chairs at the table when he fell into it, swore about it, and somehow made it into his room without falling down the stairs.

When he flicked the lamp on so that he could see his way to the bed, not pass out on the floor, it illuminated the mess his bed was still in. _Whatever, I'm not fixin' it tonight. What do I care? I'm just gonna pass out anyway,_ he mused to himself drunkenly. He staggered closer to his bed, intent only on laying down before he fell down instead. When he got close to the bed, it allowed his unfocused eyes to see what was lying in the center of his rumpled sheets. The discarded undershirt he'd ripped off the body of the very woman he was trying to forget. That was when he noticed that the rest of her things were gone from beside his bed.

He stood beside his bed in a stupor for a few moments. He wasn't sure what to do. On one hand, he wanted to go find her, make the apology Mia had told him he needed to make and see if she'd forgive him again. On the other hand, he wanted to go get another few dozen drinks. Deciding that getting back up the stairs wasn't within his realm of possibilities and that he wasn't capable of making the kind of apology he needed in the state he was in, he crawled onto his bed and collapsed there instead. The room spun around his body and consciousness proved blessedly hard to hold onto. He slipped into a deep sleep quickly.

To say he was cranky when he woke up to his alarm the next morning was putting it far too mildly. _ Fuckin' shop. _He got dressed and left his room with a hand pressed to his forehead. His brain felt like it was trying to pound its way out of his skull. He closed the door behind himself just as Leon was leaving his own room.

"You ok dawg?"

"Do I fuckin' look ok?"

"Um, no. That'd be why I asked. You look kinda green."

Vince went to answer, before remembering what he'd seen and what had been said the night before. "I'm not speaking to you. One, because I'm pissed at you for last night, and two, because if I do too much talkin' I might throw up."

"Why're you pissed at me for last night? You're the one who had sex with one girl and then tried to pick up another one right in front of the first one. Again, I might add. You're the one who did all that stuff with Jesse's cousin, of all people, and I just don't know where you get off being mad at either her or me for what _your_ actions made her do."

"Just because I messed up with her to the point she wasn't speaking to me didn't mean you had to move right in and sleep with her right behind me."

At first, when Tempest had suggested they not tell anyone what they'd done, he'd been slightly hurt she was embarrassed about it. Now he understood where she was coming from. He really didn't want to give Vince the satisfaction of being right. "Who says I did?"

"She did sleep in your room last night, didn't she? I mean, she's not out here and she wasn't with me."

"Just because I let her stay in my room because some asshole almost broke her heart doesn't mean I slept with her. For the record, if I had, it wouldn't be any of your business, and after what you did to her, you really don't have a leg to stand on getting mad about her moving on. But just because she slept in my bed last night doesn't mean we had sex."

"So you're saying you didn't?"

"I'm saying that you lost any rights over her you might have had when you let her leave the house with me'n Jesse after what you did to her. After what you've been doing to her."

Vince watched as Leon slowly got more and more angry. It wasn't something he was used to seeing from Leon.

"What I'm saying is that you don't get to ask after her sex life anymore. You don't get to care who she sleeps with. And if I want to take her to Vegas and marry her for real, you don't get to care anymore. You don't get to be angry. You had your chance. You blew it."

"Big deal! You heard her. She's only here to visit Jesse, and even he's not enough to bring her down here for longer than her vacation."

"Did you ever think to ask her to do it because she cared for you, you _stupid_ fucker?" Leon growled.

"What?" Vince asked, looking rather shocked.

"Did you ever think to ask her to move here, not for Jesse, not because she could make lots of money, but because you thought that you and she could have something special together if she was willing to come here and give you time to mean it?" When the look on Vince's face became stunned, Leon knew that no, Vince hadn't ever thought of that. "Convincing yourself you weren't losing anything because she wouldn't move here was your easy way out of looking at your feelings for her. And now it backfired. So fuck you! You don't get to almost break her over your inadequacies. Now I need breakfast before I go to work." Leon stormed off.

Vince followed a few steps behind. He wasn't sure about eating breakfast, but if he didn't go to the shop and work, not only would he be answering some questions about why he blew off Dom again, he'd be answering to why he got so loaded on a Sunday night. Alone on Sunday night. If Dom and Letty—please god, not Letty—didn't know about his latest fight with Tempest, he'd like to keep it that way. He climbed the stairs at a snail's pace and shuffled into the kitchen.

"What's wrong with you?" Letty asked him as he sat down.

"Don't feel good," he mumbled in answer.

"Yeah, after he fucked up his own life and then some last night, he musta gotten shit faced about it," Leon threw out angrily.

"What now?" Dom asked.

Leon shot Vince a nasty look.

Vince caught it and it was more than he could take. "You really wanna go there Leon? You wanna go into how you were practically dry humping her in the backyard last night? I'm not the only one who was fucking around in other people's lives last night."

"Then if you'll recall you saw me walk away. And that was when you decided you'd just take one more shot at her. Like you hadn't kicked her when she was down enough yesterday, you decided to take a little light flirting between friends and turn it into something dirty to see if you could possibly make her feel like an even bigger whore than you already had. So yeah, let's go there Vince."

Dom looked between Leon and Vince. It was also hard to miss the look of shame on his sister's face. "Would someone care to fill me in on what you guys are talking about?" he growled.

Before either Leon or Vince could speak, Jesse bounded up the stairs. "'Mornin'," he said with a grin. "What's for breakfast?"

"Usual," Mia answered, forcing herself to grin back.

Leon glanced around the table before Jesse could sit down, warning them all to keep it to themselves. If Tempest didn't want her cousin worried about her, than they weren't going to give him a reason to do so.

Mia sat down with her own breakfast and stared at her plate. She felt horrible for her part in what occurred. She didn't know what to say so she kept her mouth shut. She knew that she had responsibility for some of what had happened. Sure, Vince shouldn't have decided to take her clothes off with his eyes when the girl he'd just slept with was right there. But she shouldn't have given him any signs whatsoever that his attention was appreciated.

She was never more glad for a meal to be over than she was for that breakfast to be over. She was happy to do the dishes behind everyone because it meant that everyone else was gone and the oppressive atmosphere which had hung over breakfast was gone. Thankfully, Jesse hadn't seemed to pick up on the tension between everyone. Well, everyone but Letty. Letty seemed pretty in the dark about the whole goings on. Not that Dom wasn't, but Dom knew just enough to worry about it all now. When she finished cleaning up the kitchen she left to open her café. She knew she was going to worry all day long about her coming apology to Tempest, but there was no way around the necessity of it.


	39. Of Plans and Something to Talk About

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Thirty Nine – **Of Plans and Something to Talk About**

When Tempest woke up she stretched and it took her a moment to remember where she was and why she had no clothes on. She tried to be embarrassed about what she'd done, but she couldn't. All she could seem to see was the way Leon really looked at her. The way he seemed to really care about her. She ultimately knew that she'd needed the confidence boost that his attention had given her just to restore some of her normal attitude. She understood just a small fraction of the mental process involved in staying with a man who was bad for you and treated you badly, looking back on what she had gone through over the past few days.

The good times got you so convinced things were ok that when the bad times came, you couldn't help but feel it was at least partially your fault, and that if you just worked harder and waited it out, the good times would come again. After all, the good times had been pretty good before. So if something made things bad, didn't it have to be at least partially blameable on something you had done? Wasn't that only fair and logical?

It was like because you took some of the blame for a bad situation onto yourself, you had to stand there with your little bowl out begging for more. But you didn't. Not really. However, if you never realized that, you'd stand forever taking the bad and your share of a blame. A blame that you shouldn't be responsible for in any sense. With a shake of her head, she got up and put her shorts from the night before back on. She figured with a smirk that in the grand scheme of things she didn't really wear them long enough to get them dirty. Then, today, it was Leon's drawers she rooted around in while looking for a top.

She ultimately decided on a Von Dutch work shirt that had 'Leon' embroidered over the left breast pocket and short sleeves in black on the vivid blue base of the rest. She actually laughed as she put it on, because she fully intended to head to the shop as soon as she had her laundry in the dryer, and she was also fully aware of the fact that the shop was where Vince was. She wanted him to see her wearing Leon's shirt, with Leon's name on it, and wonder why she was wearing clothing with another man's name on them. She wanted him to wonder just what had occurred, no matter what Leon had told him. She was glad to see her normal, take no shit, take no prisoners, no holds barred personality was back in full effect. There was a reason that she deserved the name 'Trouble' and she was fully ready, willing and able to start showing it to the world again. How had one week seemed so damn long with all the highs and lows?

She showered while her clothes washed, got them in the dryer, set it, and ran upstairs. She kicked her shoes on and grabbed her keys off the hall table. She slid into the Skyline and almost choked on the hot air inside. Gasping for air fit to breathe; she started the car and got the windows open in a hurry. Once that was done she backed out of the driveway and headed off down the street. And she managed not to think about Vince until the car was in first. That was when the fact that he'd designed the interior for her jumped to the forefront of her mind. He clearly wasn't brainless. So why did he act like he was? She blew some hair off her face as she shifted into fourth and shook her head. She'd never figure out men. Not ever.

When she found herself singing along with the radio, she figured she should be seriously ashamed of her self for being in such a good mood after what she'd done. She'd slept with a friend on the same night as she dropped her 'sort of' boyfriend. And now she was looking forward to rubbing his nose in it while she refused to admit she'd done anything at all. It was harsh, but it was somehow very _her_. She parked the Skyline around back and walked into the shop, pushing the door open and strutting in like she hadn't a care in the world. And surprisingly, she pretty much didn't. As long as she just didn't let herself really think about it too hard.

Figuring that walking straight up to Leon would be overkill, she wandered up to Jesse instead. They were working on the same car, so it was almost the same thing. "Here I was thinkin' that you were supposed to be takin' time off to entertain me, and I wake up all alone in the house. Again." She threw her arms around his neck with a grin which took the sting out of her words.

"I thought you'd sleep in until almost lunchtime. I was gonna go back to the house then and see what you wanted to do."

"That's somethin' I guess."

"Why are you up so early?"

"I dunno. I just woke up early. I got my laundry washed and into the dryer so I'll have my own clothes for tomorrow and then I was done."

"Well, I'll just help Leon finish this one up and then I'm done. Really, it's slow today anyway. There's nothing goin' on."

"That's cool. What're we gonna do this afternoon?"

"Didn't really think about it." He seemed to think about it then. "Hey! Wanna go to the Universal Studios theme park? I've wanted to see it for a while now but I haven't ever gotten around to it."

"I dunno. What is it?"

Leon finally stood up from under the hood of the Celica he was working on. "It's full of rides based on action movies." He looked Tempest up and down. He couldn't stop the grin that spread over his face. "Hey," he said softly, directly to her.

She grinned back. "Hey yourself."

He read his own name on her shirt and chuckled. "This is gonna get confusing."

"What is?" Jesse asked.

"It seems like today, we got two Leons."

"I was outta clothes. Sorry." She shrugged and failed to look anything close to sorry.

"Don't be." He leaned closer to her so no one else could hear what he said. "I like the way that looks on you. You fill it out better'n I do," he winked.

She felt her grin get bigger, almost goofy. "I just bet." She tugged at the front of his basketball tank playfully a few times. "So, what're the odds you can get outta here at lunch and come to this wild ride too?"

"I'd say pretty good, if Jess'n I get this car done." Leon shot a covert look at Vince and again leaned close enough to keep their conversation only between Tempest and himself. "Is really bad I wanna kiss you right now? In front of them all?"

She threw her head back and laughed. When she could control her breathing it was her turn to lean into him. "Is really, really bad I wanna let you?"

"Yeah, it is," he answered, but he was laughing as he said it. "Why don't you go chill with a Pepsi on the couch and Jess'n I'll finish this up?"

Noting that she'd have to walk past where Vince was working to get to the couch she nodded her agreement, lower lip caught between her teeth to prevent her from cracking up laughing. They were both fighting very dirty. Like it wasn't bad enough they'd done what they'd done and then denied it, now they were rubbing in something that they supposedly hadn't even done. And enjoyed, both the doing and the rubbing in of. They were both being very, very bad. But it seemed they were both very, very good at it.

She sauntered off toward the couch at the back of the shop, grabbing a cold can of cola out of the mini fridge on her way by. She looked over her shoulder long enough to see Jesse giving Leon the third degree about what was up between them before she finished crossing the shop. She reclined lazily onto the couch, picked a back issue of _Import Tuner_ up out of the pile of them on the floor, popped the top of her Pepsi and started to flip through the magazine. She had gotten almost to the middle of the magazine when she heard a masculine throat being cleared beside her. She lowered the magazine onto her chest so she could see who was standing beside her. She'd somehow known it wouldn't take Vince long to make his way over to her side to give her the third degree about what had happened after she'd dropped from his sight last night.

Once he had her eyes on him he waved to the end of the couch. "Mind?"

"Knock yourself out," she answered back, cool and serene. Like thoughts of having him so close to her didn't still make her pulse accelerate. Knowing it was stupid and it not still being true were two different things.

He sat with a sigh. "I owe you another apology."

"Don't sweat it." She offered absolution in an offhand manner, like it wasn't anything. "I'm not."

He shrugged, like it wasn't anything to him either. He ignored the fact looming large as life that he wouldn't have come over to say he was sorry if it wasn't anything to him. He looked down at her and stretched his arms out along the back of the couch in a casual fashion. "So, you'n Leon, huh?"

"Me'n Leon what?" she asked, sounding like she honestly had no idea what he was talking about.

"Just you'n Leon. Two of you seem awful cozy."

"If there's something you wanna say Vince, just spit it out already. Dancing around it like a pussy isn't really your style." She took a sip of her drink and watched his face expectantly. The look of angry distaste that past quickly over his features at her words didn't disappoint, nor did his quick removal of it in favour of bringing back his carefully light look, complete with fake but small smile and slight softening of the skin around his eyes.

"Did you hook up with Leon last night?" He kept his tone light, like he didn't really care. Just casual.

"Now, I know we had this conversation already. From now on, what I do with my life isn't any of your business," she chided with an almost teasing tone.

"So that's like saying yes."

"No, that's like saying it's none of your business. If I wanted to say yes, I'd say yes. If I wanted to say no, I'd say no. If I don't think you get the right to ask me either way anymore, I'd tell you to mind your own business." She smirked. "You can think whatever you wanna." She shrugged. "It ain't no thing to me anymore what you think. Or what you do. Or who you do. You won't catch me askin' you if you hooked up with some whore. 'Cause after yesterday, it's none of my business. I told you I didn't want anything else to do with you last night, but you told me you didn't really want anything to do with me long before that, just by the way you treated me, so it ain't no thing. Not anymore."

"It wasn't supposed to be like that."

"But yet, it was, so now what're ya gonna do?"

"Not a damn thing, I suppose," he answered, standing up. He knew the right answer was 'fight to get you back from my best friend and spend the rest of forever making it worth your while to pick me' but he had too damn much pride for that one. So letting it go like he didn't give two fucks would have to stand. But not without a caveat or two. "But you should know, I never wanted to hurt you."

She lifted one shoulder dismissively. "But yet you did. And now you don't have the power to do it anymore. Like I said, don't sweat it. It happened, it ended badly, and now it's done."

He nodded with a contemplative look on his face before walking back over to the car he was working on.

Tempest fought to keep the grin off her face. Her set down of Vince had gone far better than she had even dreamed. She knew he was going to be wondering all day what the real answer to 'did you sleep with Leon' was. And she also thought perhaps her 'it ain't no thing' attitude toward what he'd done to her had thrown him a small amount of the hurt he'd been dealing to her. After all, before last night it certainly had been a something. A big something that she'd flipped out about. Now it was nothing, and she seemed like she really meant it too. He was bound to be confused. And if she was lucky, a bit hurt at her rapid recovery over losing him.

She finished her magazine, singing along with the radio the whole time. She was about to pick up a second one when Leon and Jesse walked up to her. "We're ready if you are." Leon grinned down at her. He was fully aware of what she was up to and he couldn't wait to get the details out of her what he conversation with Vince had been about.

"I'm ready." She stood up. "Let's go."

"So, Jess and I took the Jetta here together this mornin' but I'm thinkin' I'll ride with you," Leon said as he threw an arm around Tempest's shoulders in a friendly manner. They wandered across the shop that way, walking behind Jesse toward the door, which Jesse held open to allow them to follow him through.

"Ok, if you wanna," she answered. She couldn't wait to fill him in what Vince had said and how she'd replied. And if Jesse was around she wasn't as likely to tell him all the gory details. She pushed out of the shop and walked over to her car.

"We'll meet you at home," Leon called to Jesse.

"Ok," Jesse called back, clearly confused by his friend jumping ship to ride with his cousin.

"Jesse's as puzzled by the whole situation as Vince," Tempest observed once she and Leon were both seated in the car.

"He was pushin' me pretty hard to tell him what's up."

"What'd you tell him?"

"The PG-13 version. Of what Vince did to make you take off with us, what Vince said to you in the kitchen after we got done in the backyard, and what happened last night after we closed my bedroom door."

"Was he ok with it all?"

"Until I decided to ride with you. He's pretty easy to lead, poor kid," Leon grinned. "He'll live. Enough about Jess. What'd you say to V?"

"He came over goin' on about how sorry he was and shit. And I was like don't worry about it 'cause it ain't no thing." She glanced at Leon. "And you know what? It wasn't, anymore. So that threw him way off. He was expecting me to be pissy and upset and he really didn't know what to do when I wasn't. So, of course, that made me saying it didn't matter all the more realistic."

"How'd he take that?"

"He hinted around about me'n you. He was so vague about it. So eventually I told him it wasn't his style to hint around something he wanted to say like a pussy."

Leon cracked up. "Seriously? You said that to Vince just like that?"

"Yeah, I said if you have something you wanna say just say it already cause it isn't your style to dance around it like a pussy. So he came right out and asked me."

"What'd you tell him?"

"That we already had the conversation about what was his business and what wasn't. To which he said that was like me telling him yes. So I corrected that me telling him that it wasn't any of his business was me telling him that it wasn't any of his business. He got this look on his face like he sucked a lemon and then he just gave up. Well, after he told me it was never his intent to hurt my feelings." She rolled her eyes. "I somehow doubt he had plans."

"Why do I get the funniest feeling _you_ have plans? Plans to make his life confused and miserable for the foreseeable future."

"Because you know me better'n you think?" She grinned.

"I'm not half as mad at ol' Coyote as I was. I think I'm feeling a great deal of sorry for him though."

"You should be. By the end of this, he's going to need your pity."

"I almost hate the sound of that," Leon said, but he grinned as he said it. He watched as she only winked in reply.

"But for the record, what are we doing?"

He had to think for a moment before he answered. "We're friends. Friends who've shared certain benefits." Her abrupt change in topic had thrown him.

"Ok. I know that much. But do we ever intend to share those certain benefits again, or was it a one time thing?"

"It was whichever you want it to be Gorgeous. I won't even try to lie and tell you that I wouldn't be interested in, well, continuing the benefits. What about you?"

"I don't ever want to treat someone the way he treated me. I don't know if I'm over him enough to not turn around and end up treating you like he treated me. And I know he's all wrong for me," she punctuated her sentence with an irate hand gesture in the air, "and that I ultimately dodged a huge bullet, but now—just right now," she glanced at him quickly before turning her eyes back on the road, "I can't see any of that." She shook her head, a look of deep concentration on her face. "I just see how great it coulda been, and how big an asshole he was, and how much it hurt. And how I never want to do that to another person if I can help it.

"And what we did wasn't a mistake. I don't want you to come away feeling that that's what I think because it isn't. If it wasn't for me'n you, I'd still be moping around wondering what exactly Mia has that I don't. What she has that's so great that even the very great sex we were having wasn't enough to overcome it. But I know that it's not anything wrong with me now. I likely always knew, but it took someone like you taking an interest in me to remind me. And I'm glad you showed me. So don't think I'm not, or that I'm upset it happened. But I don't want to get in too deep with you and not be able to feel the same way about you that you feel about me. And maybe we could both keep it on the same level, the same friends with benefits level. But maybe not. And I don't think I'm ready to really fall for someone else right now."

Leon nodded. He understood where she was coming from. "I guess I understand."

"I'm glad." She grinned. "So, we do still get to play it like we're totally into each other, right?"

"Yeah, if for no other reason than you're hot when you're being evil."

"I must be hot a lot of the time."

He only smirked at her in answer.

"So we're really chill? No hard feelings, no awkwardness, no weird feelings being hidden?"

"I think I could really like you Temp. But some of what I thought I was feeling could have just been a protectiveness because of how V treated you and also from the fact I knew you deserved better than you were getting. And contrary to what you've no doubt heard, if I was interested I could settle down—some—and give you better than he seems capable of."

"I believe you. But there's no sense in you throwing away your little black book over me. If anything, this whole thing's shown me that I have a lot more growing up to do before I'm ever gonna be ready to deal with someone as," she found herself at a loss for an appropriate word to describe what Vince was. She gave up with a huff. "Vince as Vince is."

Leon couldn't help the laugh that escaped him. "I get you."

"So now we're gonna go do whatever it is Jess wants to do at this theme park and gonna keep on givin' 'em somethin' to talk about, yes?" Leon only nodded as they parked at the house. "Is this place full of those water rides?"

"There's a few I think. I don't think you'll get soaked or anything."

"Ok. Let's get this show on the road."


	40. Of Double Entendres and Unintentional

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By - _TempestRaces_

Chapter 40 – **Of Double Entendres and Unintentional Actions**

They arrived home many hours later. Jesse was still talking a mile a minute about how great the rides and attractions had been at the amusement park and Leon and Tempest were listening to him with half an ear each while smiling at each other about the enthusiasm of Jesse's stories about rides they'd been on with him in the first place. When they walked into the house everyone else was sitting around the living room watching TV.

"Did you guys get supper?" Mia asked, after the hellos had been exchanged.

"Yeah, we ate on the way home," Leon answered, after it became obvious that Tempest wasn't going to and that Jesse was too caught up in reliving one of the wilder rides for Letty's benefit.

"We're going to watch a movie. You guys want to see it too? I can make more popcorn!" Mia offered. Her overly bright tone sounded very forced to Leon.

"When's someone going to tell me what happened to make you treat her like glass and her treat you like the dirt under her boot?"

Mia sighed. "Leon, you wouldn't understand."

A look of shock crossed Leon's face. He knew what Tempest had told him. And he knew she really believed herself to be correct about her assumptions. But until the guilty look and evasive attitude Mia showed him in person, he hadn't been willing to believe Tempest right. "Oh my fuckin' god! She wasn't being overly sensitive at all, was she? You really did flirt back with Vince last night." The guilt on Mia's face intensified. "I can't believe this. I mean, his role in the whole thing I believed, I got, because he's a huge idiot and we all know it. But _you_ being a part of that shit." Leon shook his head. "Fuckin' priceless," he muttered.

"It wasn't intentional," Mia retorted defensively.

"Girl, you got no interest in that boy. Intentional or not, you got no call to lead him on. Not even by mistake. Because you know better, even if he doesn't."

"Don't you think I know that? The way he acts for her has me thrown."

With a sigh, Leon wished he didn't find himself in the middle of everyone's problems. Mia was upset because Vince acted better for Tempest than for her? So essentially Mia was wondering what Tempest had she didn't while the other girl wondered the same thing. And when it came to Vince, Tempest had a lot of things that Mia didn't. Like the attitude to keep him in hand and the spirit to put up with his crap. Well, his crap that didn't involve trying to pick up another girl right in front of her at least. Not that Mia would ever see that a guy like Vince enjoyed being challenged. She'd just see the attention being paid and wonder why the other girl got attention and she got single-minded focused ire and attitude fits. "You don't want him because you know he's not right for you, right?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Well, somewhere in that thick head of his, he wants her because he knows she is right for him. That's why he's different around her."

"That makes no sense." Mia shook her head.

"Take it how you will, but I'm right." And he knew it.

Before Mia could have anything else to say, Dom called out to them. "What are you two talking about that's so serious?"

"Not a damn thing Dawg." Leon threw himself onto the floor beside Jesse where he always sprawled for movies. A minute later Tempest came out of the kitchen with a glass of cola and sat down between her cousin and Leon.

"We gonna watch a movie?" she asked.

"Yeah," Dom answered.

Letty turned the movie on and they all quieted down to watch.

Conscious of Vince's eyes on her face, as soon as Tempest was finished of her drink she stretched out, her feet on Jesse's stomach and her head on Leon's, lying across them. Her knees blocked her view of Vince, and thus his of her. She managed to stay awake for the whole movie, and when it was over she excused herself to go to bed and made herself at home in Jesse's. She just wasn't willing to sleep on the couch. She knew she'd feel too exposed, and would worry about Vince deciding he had something to prove—either to himself, her or both—and bothering her in the night. She wasn't willing to risk sharing with Leon again, and repeating their nocturnal activities, thus complicating her life and situations even farther.

When Jesse made it to his room and found his cousin there he sighed. He wasn't as oblivious as people thought. He knew there was something big going on, and Tempest hiding from everyone but him more or less proved it. But in typical Jesse fashion, his mind wasn't able to focus on the issue for more than ten minutes before thinking of his cousin made him think of Skylines, which made him think of yellow and before he knew it he was sneaking back up to the kitchen for a banana, which he just suddenly had to have and then when he came back down to his room he simply poked Tempest until she moved over and flopped down beside her.

By the time he woke up the next day she was no where to be found. Puzzled about what had her up so early, he got up himself and wandered upstairs. Mia was cleaning up the kitchen and no one else was around. "Where did everyone go?"

"Shop."

"Even T?"

"Yeah, left with Leon. Well, left the house at the same time as Leon. I think they all took their own cars."

"She willingly went to the shop?" Jesse tried to figure that one out.

"I think so. I think Leon asked her to."

"Ok." Jesse sat at the table. "Why didn't anyone get me up?"

"It's so rare for you to sleep in, and you _are_ supposed to be on vacation," Mia reminded. "You want me to get you something to eat before I leave?"

"I don't wanna make you dirty everything again for me. I'll run someplace on my way to the shop."

"You sure? I don't mind."

Mia's overly bright, overly conciliatory tone bothered him. Much as Mia did like to cook, and mother everyone, she normally would have been put out to dirty her kitchen over again after just having cleaned it. Everyone was acting funny, and he was going to find out why. "Yeah, I'm sure. See you later." Jesse got up and headed for the door.

"See you."

Jesse arrived at the shop a short time later and pushed through the back door into the cool, dark air. The smell of oil, both new and burnt, and the various other chemicals in use around the place always made him feel at home. Some of his anxiety over what was up between all his friends and his cousin left him the moment he stepped into the shop. His eyes scanned the room and finally came to rest on Tempest. She was prone on her back under a car, a dirty white wifebeater and a pair of Leon's stained navy work pants her attire of choice, showing that when she'd gotten dressed this morning, she'd known where she was going and why. There was a rag around her hair, which was fastened on the back of her head in a messy knot of rioting curls.

"Damn that's a tight fit! Harder Leon. You have to push it harder if you want it to go in there!" Tempest instructed Leon, who was crouched in the mostly empty wheel well of a late nineties Civic. Jesse fought back his outright laughter at her words with a snort of amusement. His eyes found Vince, who was obviously trying to pretend he hadn't heard even though he clearly had. He wasn't doing a great job of his pretending, as his face was sporting a sneer.

"That is hard. I'm pushing as hard as I can. You sure it's lined up with the hole?"

"I'm the one under here aren't I? Yes I'm sure. Put the purse down and put your back into it."

Jesse watched as Vince got a little more angry and Leon gave whatever he was pushing on another shove.

"I'm gonna break something if I push it any harder."

"No you're not. You've got to give it a sharp thrust if it's going to slide all the way in and hit bottom."

"I have replaced a CV axle before!"

"Really? I never woulda guessed," Tempest drawled sarcastically. She was secretly glad the car hid the grin on her face. When she heard Jesse greet Leon, and was thus fairly sure that now Leon wasn't looking at the axle he was trying to pop in place, she turned it a quarter rotation, thus allowing the master spline to line up with the transaxle case. She rolled out from under the car with a sigh, forcing herself to sound frustrated in the extreme. "Boys! You want something done right, you may as well do it yourself." She pushed Leon out of the way before he could try again, took hold of the axle shaft and popped it into place. "See! One sharp jab and it slides right in." She smirked. The glance she'd spared Vince which had showed his anger with their double meaning tech talk only added to her satisfaction with the joke she'd perpetrated. She stood up next to Leon, between he and Jesse.

Leon growled at her menacingly. "I know you were up to something under there!"

"I was not. What could I have done? You could see yourself it was started. If you had done it right it would have slid right in, just like it did for me." Leon crowded her, looking angry and like he had something to say. She crowded back, still smirking evilly.

Jesse looked from one to the other. "Leon doesn't know that some of these cars have a master tooth, does he?"

"Jesse!" Tempest whined.

"You evil witch!" Leon said, looking at Tempest.

"It does _not_ have a master tooth. It was how you were doing it."

"I should have known you were up to something devious."

"It's really not my fault you're just not good at getting shafts into the holes they go into. Don't make up reasons why it's someone else's fault just to make yourself feel better about it."

Leon rolled his eyes, her double meaning easily apparent to him. "I'm gonna put this car back together and put it outside. You go be evil someplace else."

"Fine. I was ready for a break anyway." Tempest turned to Jesse as Leon went back to work on his own. "You didn't sleep in long."

Jesse took her forearm in a loose grip and started to lead her over to the couch in the back. He snagged two cans of Pepsi on his way by the fridge. When they got to the couch he pushed Tempest onto it. She landed with a quick exhale and a dirty look his way. The dirty look left her face when the can of Pepsi made it into her hand.

"What's up Jess?" She took a long drink of her soda and watched as Jesse plopped down on the floor in front of her and looked up into her face earnestly.

"That was going to be my question. What's up? What's up between you and Vince and you and Leon, and you and Mia?"

"Nothing. Well, you know what's up between me and Vince. I'm pissed at him and he doesn't think I got call to be pissed. Me'n Leon just ran into each other in the basement this morning and he asked if I wanted to hang out with him until you woke up so I did."

"There's nothing weird between you'n Mia? Nothing? Cause it seems like you won't look at her, or talk to her, and she's being awful good to me today."

"Mia's a fuckin' saint every day so how would you see the difference in the first place?"

"Oh, she's a _fuckin'_ saint but you're not having a problem with her, right?"

"Not a one," Tempest replied as her face took on a mutinous cast. _I am not telling Jesse why I'm mad at Mia! I'm just not going there._

Jesse saw the look on Tempest's face and gave up on that line of questions. She wasn't going to tell him what he wanted to know about whatever was up between her and Mia. "Ok, so, what's with you and Leon then?"

"Leon's a good friend," Tempest answered. She then fought to keep a smirk off her face. She tried to remind herself that Jesse wasn't to know just how good a friend Leon had become. "He watched out for me the night I fought with Vince, that's all. You know me, I was seriously looking for a fight and Leon made sure it wouldn't happen. At least, not between me and Vince."

Jesse looked incredulous when she told him she had attempted to start a fight with Vince. "What did Vince do to make you do something so stupid as to think about starting a fist fight with him?"

"Just more of the same shit Jesse. Listen, it's over and done. Why does it have to be a big deal now? It wasn't a big deal when it started. You seemed almost happy about it. Well, now it didn't work out. End of story, end of it mattering, end of it being a big deal."

"Just like that?" It was obvious that Jesse didn't think the situation was that cut and dry.

"Yeah," she replied. "Just like that," she finished softly.

"Is this one of those subjects I should just let drop because even though you won't tell me the truth you just don't want to talk about it?"

"Jesse," she whined. "It's not that I don't want to tell you the truth or that I don't want to talk about it. There just isn't anything to tell ok?" She sighed. "Listen. We were going out to dinner night before last and when we came upstairs he forgot I was alive over Mia, again. And she participated this time. So yeah, I'm a little pissy with her, I'm totally done with him, and the issue is closed. But it's just not that big a deal."

"How can you say it's not that big a deal? I'm gonna give him a clue!"

"No, you're not, because I'm workin' it out on my own."

"By not talking to him and having perverted little conversations disguised as car talk with Leon? Because I don't consider that worked out; not for something like this."

Jesse was very angry. More angry than she'd ever seen him. She was touched, but not touched enough to let Jesse go start a fight with Vince. She wouldn't have Jesse hurt on her behalf. And even if Vince kept his cool enough not to start a physical fight with Jesse, he would most definitely end up saying something cruel to him. "Trust me, it's worked out well enough. Just let it go, ok?"

"Ok. You're sure it's over and done with?"

"Positive."

Jesse didn't look convinced, but he did let it go. "So is this what we're doing today? Working in the garage?"

"Not necessarily. I didn't know how long you'd stay asleep so I decided to leave with Leon. If you want to do something else, I'm open to suggestions."

"As a matter of fact, I want to go get breakfast because I missed my chance at home. And then, a certain older business owner who took a huge liking to my cousin asked me to swing by his place and look at a car he has there and is thinking of buying. Wanna come?"

"Sure. I'm starving, now that you mention it."

"Why didn't you eat at home with everyone else before you left with Leon?"

"It was a combination of not being hungry quite that early in the morning and refusing to eat any food that Mia cooked."

"You'd be catty to the exception of anything else, wouldn't you?" Jesse laughed.

"I wasn't being catty. I have a right to be pissed off. She messed up my life, and she's only messing Vince up worse by acting like there's a chance she'll ever have feelings for him. She deserves to be treated like something other than 'Saint Mia' for a change."

"Ok, I get it at least." Jesse stood up before he took Tempest's hand and tugged her to her feet. "Let's go eat so we can get to Harry's already." He started for the door, dragging her with him. "Can we take the Skyline?"

"Only if you've accepted the fact that I'll be the one driving the Skyline."

"Fine. Let's just go already."

"J?"

Jesse turned back to look at his cousin. "Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"For what?"

"For the thought, at least. It's nice to know you wanted to avenge my honour."

"I love you like a sister. I still don't agree with doing nothing other than making him think you're sleeping with Leon instead of him, you know." Jesse took a good look at Tempest's face. "Oh my fucking god, you're not just making him think you're sleeping with Leon. You are!"

"No I'm not. Well, I mean, I did stay in his room once, so I guess if Vince were to ask point blank if I slept with Leon and I said yes I wouldn't be lying, but I'm not having a relationship with Leon."

"I know I don't come off all that smart, but if you think I didn't notice how you neatly sidestepped giving me a straight answer about whether or not you and Leon had sex, think again."

Tempest rubbed her suddenly tired eyes with the sides of her fists. She didn't want to lie to her cousin. But it seemed like he'd be angry with her if he knew she'd slept with two of his best friends, not just one. Much as she loved him, and much as he was her relation, it also wasn't totally his business. In the end she figured that she and Leon had decided what they'd done was their business and had agreed not to tell anyone. And anyone included Jesse. "I didn't go all the way with Leon, Jesse." He seemed to take her words at face value and they left the garage to head to Harry's.


	41. Of Falling and Shady Requests

AN: A few chapters ago I said the story was going to move into that really larger than life set of scenarios soon? Remember? Ok, well, this chapter sort of marks the start of that. But it's all in good fun.

To the reviewer who wondered what day it is…The days of week one sort of blend together. It's Friday, in this chapter. I might have gained a day in there somewhere, or lost one. I guess the point is that I lost track of how many sleeps vs. how many days in a week there are :D. Let's just pretend now it's Friday of week one and pretend too that my whole melding of days concept worked out better than I even hoped, ok:D

It's funny too. I like Mia. I always did. I feel bad for her because I know so many guys like V, and when they get something in their heads it's like a pittbull with a bone. They're not giving up until they get their way. And he's her bros best friend so he's not going anywhere. And she lives with Dom, so neither is she. She can't get away from him, and he's so doggedly determined to have her. I understand where she's coming from. I tried to write her as a good person, who just makes mistakes. Who's gotten used to a certain level of attention to make her feel good about herself when she has a shitty day or whatever. I never intended to write her so that people wouldn't like her. But so many people who read this story comment on how much they would love to see Temp take her into the ground, LOL. It'd hardly be fair to put miss girlie girl up against Temp. :D

On with the show, thanks for the reviews. Anything you don't want to say in a review, email to me. My addie is in my profile.

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Forty-One – **Of Falling and Shady Requests**

When they arrived at the store, Jesse had her park around the back. They found Harry there, leaning into the open engine compartment of a long red convertible. As soon as she had the car in first and the parking brake on, Tempest was out of the Skyline. "Holy shit," she said with a grin. Harry stood up when he heard her voice and returned her grin.

"Funny, I think the same thing when I see _you_ getting out of _that_," he said, walking forward.

"That is the finest thing to ever leave Japan," Tempest answered, gesturing backward at her Skyline almost absently. "That," she began, pointing at the car Harry was still standing in front of, "is one of the most beautiful things to ever leave Europe and you somehow got your hands on one."

"I have my sources. It's rough."

"It's a fuckin' Lotus Elan! It can be as rough as it wants. This is what, a '95?" she seemed destined to take her question as already answered to the affirmative. "Last year for the Elan, one of only 800 made, front wheel drive, turbocharged engine. Holy shit. The only way you could shock me more was if you told me you had an Elise 111s sitting in the garage at home."

"Now that you mention it," Harry's mouth slowly formed a smirk.

One of Tempest's eyebrows cocked slowly as she waited for Harry to admit he was joking. Jesse watched their exchange with a smile.

"What can I say? I like Lotus."

"You have a brand new Elise 111s?"

"Yeah, but not at home in the garage. I drove it to work today so it's sitting in the second bay right over there. After you guys help me look this over, I'll let you take it for a spin. The Elise, not this hunk."

"Seriously?"

"Sure. Cars are meant to be driven. In fact, why don't we leave Jesse to start taking inventory just how big a hunk this thing is and take the Elise for a run? From what I've heard, you'll show me what it can do a little better than I can myself."

"Let's do it!" Tempest spared a look for Jesse. "You don't mind, do you Jess?"

"No. But I might need your help to check some of this car out, so if you could be back in about half an hour—" he trailed off as he got involved in the engine of the Elan.

"Sure. Half an hour should be enough time to take the Elise for a pretty good run," Tempest answered happily. She turned to Harry. "Let's go."

Harry tossed her a set of keys and clicked something in his pocket. One of the bay doors on the back of _The Racer's Edge_ began to wind up. Tempest started toward the open door after sparing Jesse a glance to make sure he was entertained. He was just a set of legs sticking out of the engine compartment of the Elan, so she was sure he was happy. When she got to the bay door, it was fully open and a bright blue Elise was perched under the florescent lights of the spotless garage bay. The top was down and the leather interior glowed with a black satin lustre. To many, it would be one of the hardest looking cars they'd ever seen. To her, it was a marvel of design and engineering. Just looking at it sitting there, the tingling started. She itched to drive it. She craved it on many levels.

Tempest slid behind the wheel with a blissful sigh and slid the key into the ignition. The seat was almost perfect for her already. She let the back recline slightly more. While Harry was taller, she was always more comfortable sitting farther away from the wheel, so the distance to the pedals was already perfect for her. Once Harry had made himself at home in the passenger seat, she started the car and pulled carefully out of the garage. After a sedate trip around the store, she pulled onto the road and let rip.

For the first while Harry didn't seem too bothered by her driving. That was when she made it her personal mission to make him gasp, or flinch, or grab the door handle. Given his occupation selling parts to people so they could turn their street legal cars into road rockets, she figured that he had a penchant for speed himself. Or at least had, at one point in his life. So she pushed the envelope a little harder than her norm. He seemed unaffected. She took a corner so hard they almost went up on two wheels. She thought she saw a small grimace on his face, but she figured she also could have imagined it, so it didn't count. She still laughed at the feeling of the little car taking the tight corner so precisely.

She finally got her wish when she drifted down an off ramp when leaving the coastal highway. Harry's hand darted up and grabbed the top of the windshield as the tires squealed and smoked going down the winding exit.

"You trying to scare me?" he asked once he had his breath back, after they had levelled out on the street she had chosen.

"Maybe just a little. This is a really fun car to drive. Hard to drift though. Not a lot of weight to play with to start it off."

"Yeah, and that means not a lot of metal stopping us from dying if we flip over, either." Harry took another deep breath. He had another reason behind asking her to go for a drive with him that had nothing to do with getting to watch her drive. Now that he knew she had the skills to back up the reputation behind the wheel Jesse had built for her, he had a question to ask, and not one he could broach in front of her over protective cousin. "So," he started. "You like how this car drives?"

"Yeah, of course. It's a Lotus! Who does suspension better than Lotus?"

Harry laughed. "I guess you have a point." He looked around at the scenery for a moment to collect his thoughts. "So," he began, sparing a glance her way. "How would you like to make a couple thousand bucks tonight?"

"Come again?" At her incredulous question her head snapped around to look him in the eyes. She quickly returned her gaze to the road, knowing that taking her eyes off it for long at the speed she was going wasn't very smart. She really hoped he wasn't offering her a chance to make a couple thousand bucks taking her clothes off for him. Her impression of him still wasn't that he was that kind of man, but the words of Vince, Leon and Jesse still swam around in her head.

"I have an errand that needs running tonight and I'm really not equipped to deal with it myself. I don't drive this well anymore, and I don't have the skill Jesse says you do with a firearm."

"What kind of job are you offering me here?"

"I need someone to go and pay for as well as pick up a shipment of parts I've arranged to buy."

She looked at him askance. "Does buying stock always require a getaway driver who's armed?"

"No, but the stock I'm buying isn't exactly coming direct shipped from HKS and Veilside, if you get my drift."

She did, though she felt like maybe she should feel slightly bad she did. He was talking about receiving stolen property, so he was talking three to five if caught. "So how much money are we talkin' here, and what kind of situation will I be putting myself into? 'Cause while Jesse's right, and I did grow up around guns, I've never really aimed one at another human being."

"I would think the exchange will be made perfectly civilly. The people I'm dealing with have a good reputation for this sort of thing. Well, if anyone has a _good_ reputation for this sort of thing…I've never heard of anyone having trouble with them if they dealt with them square. But when one does business with dogs, one goes in with the expectation he might get bitten. I have no talent in the areas we're talking about so I'm useless to go myself. But it would be worth five thousand dollars to me to have someone skilled go in my place. Someone I can trust, and someone who drives better than those with the merchandise likely do themselves."

She pondered that for a moment, her forehead and bridge of her nose wrinkled in thought. Why pick her? "Why not ask Dom, Vince or Leon? They know the area better, and at least two of them have more practical experience with the unsavoury side of firearms than I do."

Harry sighed. She asked a valid question and she would need to receive a valid answer. "Dom has turned to the moral high ground since his release from prison, and in all fairness, he's still on parole. Being caught street racing could land him back in jail if the right cop busted him for it. He's not likely to take on a job of this magnitude. He'd go back to jail and not to the minimum security vacation of Lompoc either. He'd do hard time in a maximum security pen if he was busted for receiving stolen goods. He was never into this kind of thing anyway. Dom had a good childhood. I don't think he'd even be street racing if he hadn't lost his dad and felt like he had no other choice. Dom's not a criminal at heart. Leon lacks the skill with firearms and I wouldn't send an unarmed person to a deal like this. It just sits wrong. Again, it's not really Leon's style. And Vince is far too volatile. I don't trust him enough to put a job like this in his hands." Harry grinned. "Using a female appeals to me. You'll be underestimated from the beginning and you can use it to your advantage."

"So I go, you give me the money to pay for your shipment, I make the exchange with these guys, then what?"

"I'll be sending a truck and driver with you. Their driver and yours will unhook the trailer from their truck and connect it to yours. You will check the merchandise before this step. Make them open the trailer and let Jorge—he's the driver—stand guard while you get in the trailer and make sure that all the parts seem to be real and that the trailer isn't full of empty boxes. Then you'll escort your truck back to the store and I'll have a team waiting to unload it."

"You expect me to blend in doing a deal like this with my car? Anyone who sees the deal going down will be able to pick my car out from a mile away if they ever see it again. Not to mention the Canadian tags on it."

"I was counting on you saying that. The Lotus will be at your disposal for the rest of the evening if you'd like to take the job on. I figured you wouldn't want to put the infamous 'Ray' in danger. And anything you need for the Skyline in the future and can't find, well, I'd be eternally grateful for the favour."

"So I get five grand, the loan of a Lotus Elise for the night, and someone to source Skyline parts for me when I can't do it myself and you get a female representative to pick up your truck. And that's it? Simple as that?"

"Simple as that." Harry confirmed, looking out the side window as scenery flashed by.

"Where am I supposed to get the gun? I'm not exactly packing on the average cross border trip."

"I'll give you something. You just have to show up at the 'Edge at twelve without anyone in the house knowing you're out, or at least not knowing where you're going or planning to follow you. I'll provide you with the car, gun and money when you arrive and I'll be waiting for you to get back with the truck. Again, I don't expect any trouble. You just have to follow Jorge to the drop point, check the cargo, exchange the money—which will all be in order for payment when I give it to you—and escort the truck back to the store. Should be the easiest money you've ever made."

Tempest shrugged. Sounded like Harry had put a lot of thought into what he was asking her to do. If he was that sure she could do it, she'd give it a shot. "Ok, I'm in." She headed toward the store again. "Sounds like a blast, really." And she really needed the money. And she was so tired of being the good girl. The girl who's only step out of line was drinking too much and using too many swear words. She had already started down the road to hell with her quick and elemental relationship with Vince. Why not finish the fall? She'd always been drawn just a bit toward the dark side. Had always contemplated jumping over to the criminal side of the law full time. She'd never been given the chance before.

"Good."

They pulled up beside the Elan, currently up on blocks with Jesse's legs sticking out from under it.

"What's the damage Jesse?" Harry asked as he got out of the Elise.

"Hot side turbine's got bent fins, rad's shot, rear brakes need pads, rotors _and_ calipers, head gasket's leaking, downpipe's cracked and there's some sort of fucked up issue with the windows and the headlights. But the body and interior are mint, the car's never been modified and once the head gasket is replaced and the timing is set again, the engine will be in pretty good shape, considering."

"There's GM calipers that'll fit it," Tempest offered. "And the headlights and windows are a common problem. I can show you how to fix those up before I go home, if you end up buying it."

"How do you know so much about Lotus?" Harry asked curiously.

"I have a friend who likes them. When I visit him in Toronto we work on his Elan and it's in the same year range."

"Why's he like Lotus so much? From Europe?"

"Yeah, he is. But that doesn't explain it. Angelo's Italian. You'd think he'd have a soft spot for Ferrari."

Harry laughed. Jesse got up from the creeper he had been laying on. "You still know that guy?"

"Yeah, I still know that guy." Tempest shook her head at Jesse's question. "You knew that."

"I thought you lost touch with him ages ago."

"No. He was too busy for a long time for us to have much to do with each other but I never lost contact with him, exactly." Her tone let them know it was a subject they were going to be dropping, because she wouldn't be participating in talking about it any further. Jesse's dislike of Angelo was a running sore point between them. She didn't think Jesse had any right to hate one of her friends on principle simply because he was a better hacker than Jesse was himself, and Jesse figured that anyone who used his hacking skills to make a living and not to simply promote global sharing of internet information wasn't hacking for the right reasons. All Tempest knew was Angelo was the best friend she'd ever had, ever, and wouldn't tolerate hearing him bad mouthed.

"Well, whatever," Jesse dismissed the subject, knowing it was futile to pursue it. "If the price is right, I'd take it Harry. With a little work it'll be worth some good money and its fast enough to be interesting."

"Consider it bought. Think you boys can do the work at Dom's?"

"If Temp's that sure she can handle the electrical before she leaves then yeah. I don't know if Leon could handle tracking down electrical glitches in a car like this."

"Good," Harry said. "I'll haul it down there sometime tomorrow then."

Jesse nodded.

Tempest looked at Harry for a moment before she turned to Jesse. "Jess, you can drive back. Go start the car and I'll catch up with you in a sec."

"Ok," Jesse answered. He took the keys and started toward the Skyline.

"I'll be down here for twelve. I'll pick up the Elise then and I'll have to hide the Skyline back here while I'm gone. If I take the other car home now it'll make them all ask questions I don't want to answer."

"You won't have trouble getting out of the house?"

"They all go to bed pretty early when it's not race night. All but Vince. And I'll be able to work around him. It won't be a problem."

"I'll have the car and the rest of it ready for then, and I'll have the money too. Both yours and the payment."

"Ok. See you then."


	42. Of Fear and Self Preservation

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Forty-Two – **Of Fear and Self Preservation**

They parted ways and Tempest headed over to her car. She slid in the passenger seat and Jesse backed out around the building. "What was that about?"

"Harry's working on some parts for the Skyline. Just some backup stuff that he'll have an easier time getting his hands on than I will once I go home."

As that seemed like a perfectly valid reason for her to talk to Harry to him, Jesse let the topic drop. Since it was pretty much supper time, he headed for the house. "What're you doin' tonight?" Jesse asked after he'd shut the car down.

Tempest shrugged. "Not too much, I'd imagine. Not unless you have big plans for us?"

"We could go to another movie."

"If I get to pick this time."

"Deal. I'll get the website up after we eat and you can see what's there."

"Sure," Tempest answered before following Jesse into the house. She realized that this time she was going to have to eat the meal Mia had made. Otherwise she was going to look bitchy to everyone. There was no conveniently invented excuse as to why she didn't normally eat supper. Not like there was for her and breakfast. And if they wondered why she wouldn't eat supper with everyone they'd ask questions about the whys and she had no desire to answer them. Had no desire to talk about the situation either. So when Jesse headed right to the dining room after his shoes were off, she followed him. Since Vince was no where to be found, she sat beside Jesse and hoped he didn't show up late.

It was Jesse that commented on his absence. "Vince not come home for supper?"

"No," Dom answered shortly.

"Why not?" Jesse asked. He had obviously been oblivious to Dom's queues to let it go.

"He didn't care to fill us in. He just told us he wasn't coming home and didn't know when he would end up back here. But that it wouldn't be until late tonight. Then he left for somewhere right from the garage."

"Oh, ok." Jesse let the topic go with a shrug.

Tempest kept her sigh of relief to herself. Or so she thought, until she saw the look Leon was giving her across the table. She shrugged and mouthed the word 'what'.

Leon just shook his head. Two of the most stubborn, blind, and often stupid people in the world and they had to hook up to be stubborn, blind, and stupid together, break each other, and generally irritate those around them right there in _his_ house. Finally he mouthed back 'nothing' with a smirk. Tempest replied by sticking her tongue out at him. Leon kicked her in the shin under the table. A look of pain flashed briefly in her eyes before a look of evil replaced it.

Carefully, she pried her boot off her foot and started to run it up the baggy pant leg of Leon's jeans. She knew he couldn't say or do anything without alerting the entire table to what she was doing. She went back to a mundane conversation with Jesse, all the while brushing her toes over the skin of Leon's calf, knee and thigh. She occasionally watched him out of the corner of her eye as he attempted not to show any reaction.

As Dom watched Tempest talk with just slightly too much enthusiasm about radiators with Jesse, and watched Leon keep a relaxed look just a little too relaxed to be normal on his face, he slowly got madder and madder. Things were up within his team. Things he didn't understand or like and he was getting tired of it. Her and Vince at each other's throats. Her going out of her way to piss Vince off. Vince behaving not even half as well as a spoiled child. Her getting very buddy buddy with Leon. The exchange she and Leon had just made totally nonverbally worried him. Why had they gotten close enough to 'speak' without needing words? And why was Leon studying his dinner so intently now?

Leon fought back a response of some kind as the seeking toes of the witch across the table brushed very close to his groin, yet didn't touch. He watched her face as she watched her cousin, easily keeping up in the conversation she was having with Jesse while she really concentrated on torturing him. She had her chin cupped in her palm, her green eyes focused on Jesse's blue ones, and was responding appropriately to everything Jesse said. Yet he was sure most of her concentration was on keeping her toes dancing all around the places that would drive him crazy, and not give so much as a feather touch where he really wanted it. He really was fine with their decision not to try being together in a real sense. But that didn't stop his body from looking at her, knowing she was good at certain things, and responding to the potential to do them again. Sitting with the rest of his family at the dinner table or not. He saw her pupils dart to the corners of her eyes and glance his way swiftly again, before just as swiftly returning to center on Jesse.

Leon looked flustered, she giggled to herself. She knew what he'd been thinking about her, and she didn't like it at all. So she was making him pay. She brushed the ball of her foot over the area she'd been studiously avoiding before starting to toy with the hem of his jeans on the other side. She never paused or dropped the thread of the conversations she seemed deeply involved in with Jesse. She thought everyone but she and Leon were immune to what was happening between them. Deciding she'd really make Leon pay a second before she stopped and allowed him a few moments to comport himself well enough to stand up from the table, she tripped her toes ever higher before using the ball of her foot to apply gentle pressure in a few strategic areas.

As he watched Leon's quick indrawn breath, watched him almost suck part of a carrot down his throat unchewed, and return with far too much concentration to watching his dinner, Dom had enough. "What is going on?" he bellowed.

His roar caused Tempest to momentarily forget where her foot was. Her knee hit the underside of the tabletop hard enough to make her bite her lip to stop from doing some bellowing of her own. The rebound caused when her knee bounced off the oak table caused her to drive her foot with some force into a sensitive area of Leon's anatomy.

Leon fought back a string of swear words. She hadn't gotten him that badly but the unexpected jolt had shocked him. He watched with some glee as tears welled at the bottom of her eyes and she fought the need to rub her now aching kneecap. He fought a need of his own to rub his now throbbing for different reasons than before crotch. He spared a glance at Dominic. There could well be serious trouble brewing. Dom was very pissed off.

"Well?" Dom growled. No one answered. Tempest had remained locked in her conversation with Jesse, but she had stopped talking when he roared. Jesse was looking around in confusion, so as if she realized that pretending to still be looking at him while they talked wouldn't work anymore, she looked around the table too. She looked at Letty with one eyebrow cocked and Letty only grinned in answer. Dom knew they were basically laughing at him together for taking whatever was going on so seriously, and it only served to make him angrier. This intensified when Leon shook his head at them in warning, as if to warn them he was off his rocker already and the two cocky females didn't need to make it worse. "Someone better tell me what the fuck is going on around here lately!"

"Nothing Dom. Chill out already," Letty told him, a ghost of a smile still flirting with the corners of her mouth.

"Nothing," Dom growled softly to himself. "Nothing is why these two had some sort of private conversation over why Vince wouldn't come home for supper? Nothing is why those two," he gestured between Jesse and Tempest, "found a conversation about radiators so interesting? Nothing is what made him," he pointed at Leon, "almost choke on his dinner? Nothing is what made her," this time he glared at Tempest, "almost bite her own lip off in an effort not to scream at me? You still want me to believe nothing is going on after all of that?"

"Dom, you need to calm down dawg. It's no big deal," Leon tried to placate Dominic before he could get really upset.

"If it's no big deal you shouldn't have a hard time telling me what's going on."

"Like Letty said, nothing is going on," Tempest finally found her voice. She carefully manoeuvred her foot back into her discarded boot in preparation for needing to stand up away from the table.

"Nothing? For real?" Dom glared at her.

"Listen, much as I know you figure everything that goes on in the state of California is your business, that's not really true. So yeah, seriously, nothing is going on that involves you and when you need to know what's up, someone will fill you in. Until then just chill out before you drop dead of an aneurism or somethin'. Stress is going to kill you young if you don't calm the fuck down."

Jesse looked quickly between his cousin and his mentor. "If we're gonna catch that movie we should really head out now or we're not gonna make it." He scraped back from the table quickly and took hold of Tempest's upper arm to haul her out of her chair.

"Sit!" Dom roared. "No one is going anywhere until this is settled."

Jesse's ass was in his seat again so fast Tempest had to wonder if he had friction burn or splinters from the process. _That tears it!_ "Really?" she asked, her eyebrows drawn together over her nose in disbelief. "You're gonna stop _me_ from goin' someplace? 'Cause I missed out on the memo that gave _you_ any authority over _me_." She stood up in preparation for walking away from Dom and his archaic attitude.

"You better shut that fuckin' smart ass mouth before I shut it for you!"

Tempest laughed. She really laughed, from deep in her belly with genuine mirth. It scared Leon in a lot of ways, as he watched Dom's face turn red in reaction. "Baby girl," he murmured her way in warning.

"No, seriously! I want to see him shut my mouth for me," Tempest was still chuckling as she turned her laughing green gaze to Leon. She had to wonder who Dom thought he was. She spared a quick look at Letty and found that the other girl was no longer laughing. She was exchanging a worried glance with Mia. "You know what? This is totally retarded. I'm going to go change out of my dirty work cloths." She looked at Jesse. "And if you're allowed out to play after supper, we'll go see that movie." She started to walk away from the table and before she knew it she had Dom's huge, callused hand wrapped around her wrist as he stopped her travel toward the basement stairs.

"I said, sit back down," he ground out through clenched teeth.

"And I said no," she answered, shrugging. "So now what?"

Dom's grip tightened on her arm as he rose out of his chair. "Either sit, or I'll put you in the chair myself."

"Let go of me," Tempest ordered. Her eyes took on the hard cast of stone as she slowly got angrier and it drew her down into a place of icy calm control over her emotions. Dom was taking this thing between them one step too far. Her frozen jade, narrowed eyes met his fire hot black irises in a clash of wills so strong it was felt by everyone in the room. "Did you hear me or are you deaf?" she asked between clenched teeth, as his strong brown hand stayed locked around her slender wrist with an iron grip.

"I heard you, you spitting wild bitch, but I'm sick of your shit. So sit your ass down in your chair before I put you there!" Dom used his grip on her arm to back her up a step toward her abandoned seat.

Dom might have truly been sick of her shit, but not half as sick as she was of his, she was willing to bet. With a twist of her arm she had her wrist free. While Dom was looking at her in shock, having never been treated to one of her escape manoeuvres, she spun on her heel, leaned to one side and had her right foot pinning Dom to the wall by his throat a second later. "When I say let me go, I suggest you let me go." She stood breathing heavily, her foot pressing into Dom's neck just enough to start to restrict his airflow, thus letting him know she meant business. The second she'd done what she'd done, she had started to rethink the manoeuvre. Sooner or later, she was going to have to let him go. While the threat of not being able to breath was keeping him still and docile right now, god knew what he'd do when she let him go. She couldn't hold him pinned to the wall forever. "Nothing about you kindly allowing Jesse to offer me a place to stay here gave you the right to put your hands on me. Do you understand?" He just stared back at her, anger colouring his face a vivid red. Of course, the lack of oxygen might also have had something to do with it, she figured.

"Come on Gorgeous," Leon finally got over his shock and got up out of his seat. "This doesn't really have to go this far, does it?"

"It didn't have to before someone put his overgrown paws on me without an invite." She looked at Leon and let him see the fear she had over turning Dominic loose after what she'd done. It was strange to her, how she was willing for Leon to know she felt fear. If it was Vince trying to get her to stand down, she'd still be bluffing her way into looking pissed off. But Leon, Leon she could let see the real her. The feelings under the surface. Then Dom's hands locked around her ankle and she pressed her booted foot into his neck harder on instinct alone. His hands fell off but the angry look on his face intensified. She couldn't help herself. Self preservation took centre stage when anyone put her personal safety on the line.

Leon, ever the peacemaker, stepped forward a few more steps and ran a finger down her cheek soothingly. "I'm sure that it was pure instinct on Dom's part to grab you like that, just like it pure instinct for you to protect yourself the way you did. So I'm sure that if you let him free, you can both admit you over reacted and let it go. Can't you?" Leon asked her softly. While he posed his question to Tempest he was looking at Dom for some clue he wouldn't come at the smaller woman when he was freed. Dom seemed to nod almost imperceptibly.

Everyone else sat frozen around the table, unable to believe what they had just seen. Not only had someone pinned Dom down against his will, but it had been the female cousin of Jesse, the most easy going person they all knew. No one knew what to do so they all did nothing. Leon was the only one not shocked into remaining in his seat.

"Come on Temp, stand back, take a deep breath. Things got out of hand but it's settled now. Let him go," Leon cajoled softly. She glanced his way and whatever she saw on his face seemed to reassure her in some way as she started to unlock her knee. Her eyes darted back to Dom, as if gauging his willingness not to fly at her once there wasn't a lug soled boot against his windpipe. Before she could fully unlock her knee and turn Dom loose, Vince strode into the room.


	43. Of Taillights and Great Escapes

AN: I lied last chapter. It's Tuesday of week two. Sorry. Was in a hurry and didn't take time to read back quite far enough. I'm writing so far ahead that this is pretty much new to me as well :D Or at least it's been over a month since I wrote it. Anyway, here's the next chapter. Enjoy.

**The Funeral of a Good Girl **

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Forty Three – **Of Taillights and Great Escapes**

"Did anyone think to save me supper?" His single-minded concentration was so focused on food, he walked right into the kitchen and didn't notice the drama happening in the dining room right away. When he looked up, a piece of roast beef hanging out of his mouth, and saw what was occurring in the other room, the food fell unnoticed to the floor. "What the fuck is goin' on?"

"We had a little situation," Leon answered, trying to keep his voice moderate. "We're about to finish it though, aren't we Gorgeous?"

Now that Vince was watching, it put a wrench in the works for her. She couldn't take the high road and admit her side of the guilt. She couldn't appear weak in front of Vince. She kept her eyes locked on Dom's. "If someone sees the stupidity of putting his hands on me when the attention isn't wanted, sure we're done."

"He put his hands on you how?" Vince growled, starting their way. All he could think was that Dom had put his hands on her to touch her in ways that only he was allowed to touch her, his right to feel that way or not irrelevant. Much as he knew Dom hated her and the feeling was pretty much mutual, it was still the first thought that entered his head. His hot blue gaze collided with Dom's and he found the anger at his assumption there. Not that his friend could answer to it, not with a foot in his windpipe.

"I wanted to leave and he thought I should stick around and be subjected to his shit. When I didn't agree, he decided to keep me here against my will."

"So then you pinned him to the wall with a boot to the throat." Vince shook his head. His anger at himself for the way the thoughts of another man's hands on her made him feel made him sarcastic and mean. "Well, _that_ was smart. How're you gonna let him go now? You thought whatever he did first was bad."

"We were working it out until you butted in," Leon growled at Vince with a wide eyed look telling his friend to go fuck off someplace else.

"Oh, really? Is that why she still has her foot against his windpipe?"

"If you'd shut up we would have had it settled." Leon turned back to Tempest. "Come on Temp. Just back off and you and Jesse can go do whatever it was you wanted to do."

"Fine!" Taking the only way out she saw, that of letting Dom go because Leon asked her to, she lowered her foot away from Dom's neck and stepped back a pace.

Perhaps because of the added element of competition added by Vince's words and perhaps because he'd never intended to let things go that easily, no matter what impression he'd given Leon, the second Tempest wasn't controlling him via his air supply Dom came at her. And definitely because of the added element of Vince's presence, Tempest launched herself out to meet him half way, unable to back down. It felt like if she walked away, she would be looked upon as a coward and that she would not have.

"Christ!" Vince roared and made a grab for Dom.

As though seeing the two strong willed combatants actually go for each other jarred them out of their own worlds, Letty, Mia and Jesse jumped up from the table. Leon caught Tempest around the waist and hauled her backward, lifting her bodily off her feet. Vince had a hold of Dom and was cursing as he attempted to hold the larger man back. Dom himself was ranting about smart mouth bitches. Tempest shrieked back about overgrown cavemen who should consider growing hair to keep their brains from freezing. Leon hauled her down the stairs, trying hard to control her and not fall. Jesse followed on his heels.

"What the hell was that?" Leon growled once he was able to set her on her feet in the basement.

"What the hell was that? Are you serious? He grabbed me and wouldn't let me go! What was I supposed to do? Let him order me about like a child?"

"I dunno what you were supposed to do, but pinning Dominic Toretto to the wall with your boot in his own house wasn't it." Leon sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He didn't know where they were going to go from where they found themselves.

"I told you that you had to watch your step around him, cuz. What were you thinking telling him off like that in the first place?"

"Maybe that I'm not his child and that I don't have to answer to him! My god, he went crazy over what? The fact that Leon and I were goofing around and he wasn't included? I would suggest that he knew how Vince was before I ever got here. I'm not the only reason that Vince is behaving badly. _Vince_ is a bigger reason that Vince is behaving badly. And I've never made it a secret that I don't like being held anywhere against my will, have I?"

"Not to me," Jesse answered. "I'm not sure you and Dom ever got to know each other that well."

"Well, maybe not. But common sense—something he clearly doesn't have—should have told him that he shouldn't go grabbing strangers who tell him to buzz off."

"You should have just let it go in the first place." Leon sighed.

"And what, stayed sat at the table until he decided to let it go? Because I wasn't sitting there all night waiting on him to dismiss me. We had plans." Tempest gestured between herself and Jesse.

"He would have ranted a bit, but when he got it out of his system it would have been all over, all without anyone explaining anything or needing to get in a physical fight with him." Leon paced in front of Tempest agitatedly. "At least then I'd know how you were going to get out of the basement alive."

"I'll walk up the stairs and out the door. I'm not scared of him. What is he, two? He can't control himself from grabbing on people when he's pissed?"

"And how are you going to avoid him for the rest of the week you're here?"

"I don't intend to. I expect both of us to let it fade into the background. Either that, or I'll find someplace else to stay." Of course, knowing what she knew about the money she was about to make, that wasn't such a big deal to her. Not that Jesse and Leon knew that. They likely thought all she had was whatever was left from her winnings on race night. Of course, since she hadn't started out with anything and had won the race, she'd ended up with eight grand and most of it was still in her trunk. Add what Harry was giving her and she was going home quite well situated. If she had to spend a grand on a half decent hotel, that was just what she had to do. Given that she'd have twelve thousand American dollars in her trunk by one am, she figured she could swing it. She also decided to go shopping to spoil herself in the morning.

Little did they know, Dom was having a conversation with the remaining half of the team along the same lines.

"I can't believe the little bitch did that!"

"Dom, you grabbed her and told her you'd force her into a chair. You're not her father," Letty tried to reason with her boyfriend. It wasn't going very well.

"No, but she is staying in my house."

"Our house," Mia corrected. "And some people don't like to be touched by strangers. And that's pretty much what you are to her."

"Yeah, she had a huge problem with that when it was him," Dom growled, pointing at Vince.

"I wasn't holding her against her will." _Well, not in the same ways_, Vince mused to himself and fought the smirk that wanted to accompany that thought.

"She kicked me in my fuckin' throat. Doesn't anyone have any sympathy for that?"

"It's hard to feel sorry for the guy who weighs twice what she does that grabbed her and started to push her into a chair, no," Mia answered. "How afraid of her were you, exactly?"

"I wasn't afraid. I was pissed off."

"Yeah, think she felt the exact same way?" Mia asked gently.

Dom sighed and ran a hand over his bald head. "I don't suppose so. So now what?"

"I don't suppose it's an option for you to tell her you were wrong to grab her?" Letty asked. At the look on Dom's face she laughed. "I guess that's a no."

Slowly everyone but Letty and Dom drifted off to do other things, giving them privacy to finish their talk. No one controlled Dom like Letty. "Things have been strange since she got here. Vince is all fucked up. She's even mouthier than he is."

"But that's just how she is Dom. I gotta figure she was like that before she got here and she's not gonna change for you. She hasn't grown up putting with you like me and Mia have."

Dom pulled a face Letty's way. "Thanks."

Back in the basement things weren't going all that much better. Tempest had disappeared into the bathroom with all her stuff and no matter what Leon and Jesse shouted at her, she wouldn't come out. When she finally did emerge, she'd changed into baggy black combat pants that sat low on her hips, a black wifebeater tank, her black work boots and her hair was neatly worked into a French braid hanging down her back. All her things were packed up into her two bags. She walked without nonsense over to Jesse's side and leaned down to kiss his cheek.

"What're you doin'?" Jesse asked as he watched his cousin stand back up.

"I'm gonna find someplace else to stay, at least for the night." Tempest shouldered her bags, one on top of the other.

"No one said you had to do that!" Leon interjected.

"_I_ said I had to do that. If staying here means allowing that caveman to manhandle me I say no thank you. I have enough money to stay in a motel for the rest of my stay. And at least I'll be able to think, live and speak on my own terms."

Leon took her arm in his hand and raised it to the light. "You know, I don't see any marks here. It's not like he grabbed you and squeezed. He didn't hurt you and he didn't intend to. He's not use to people walking off on him when he's in the middle of talking."

"Yeah, and I don't really care. I'm not used to anyone telling me that I can't leave a room when I'm so inclined. I wouldn't put up with my mom or my boss talking to me like that, let alone some guy I barely know that has no real authority over me."

"Don't go stay in some strange place T! This is crazy," Jesse sighed.

"J, I need some time and space to think. Maybe I'll just go for a drive and see if I can't sort myself out that way instead, but I do have to leave for awhile and be on my own for awhile. So tell me so long, and I'll catch you in the morning, at the latest, ok?"

"Fine," Jesse sighed.

"I'll walk you outside," Leon offered and held up a hand to stop her protest. "I insist. Give me one of your bags."

She handed it over with a roll of her eyes and followed Leon up the stairs. The lower level seemed to be deserted. They walked out the front door and found the Maxima gone again. Leon put her bags into her back seat for her before standing up.

"Jesse's right, you don't have to do this."

"Yeah, I do. I won't give him that kind of power over me."

"You made it worse, Temp, and you know it. You had to go and show off when Vince was around."

"He can't think I'm weak!" she answered incredulously. "He'll never leave me alone if he thinks he can walk all over me."

"No one would ever make that mistake."

"You'd be surprised," she mumbled. "Anyway, I'll be fine on my own for a few hours and I'll see you all in the morning, ok?"

"Guess it'll have to be, won't it?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"Be careful, call if you need anything or get into any trouble."

"Yes daddy," she answered with a roll of her eyes.

"I'm serious. You need to listen to me. This city isn't friendly Temp. I can say that as someone who was new to the place at one point too."

"I know it's a harsh kind of place Leo. Don't worry about me. I'll call you," she assured Leon as she hugged him hard before lowering herself into the seat of her Skyline.

"Ok. I'll go console your cousin, whose heart you just broke."

"Jess'll live." She watched as Leon nodded in answer to her statement and headed back into the house. Before she could change her mind, she started her car and backed down the drive before squealing down the street.

The noise brought Dom to his bedroom window, which had a view of the front of the house. "Fuck."

"What?" Letty questioned.

"She just left. Alone."

"Seriously?"

"No, I'm fucking kidding about something like this."

"Well, don't bite my head off over it. I told you to tell her you were mistaken by what you did and you wouldn't."

"So now it's my fault she took off? Like Leon and Jesse couldn't have stopped her?"

"You couldn't stop her from doing what she did to you. What makes them so different?"

"I don't fuckin' know! Now what?"

"Nothing. She'll come back when she's ready or she won't. What're you gonna do? Anyway, what'd you care? Half an hour ago you couldn't wait to see her taillights."

"But now I'm going to hear about it from Leon and Jesse, and you know it."

"I doubt Jesse will dare have anything to say. Leon on the other hand, who knows." Letty knew that the fact Dom would worry about Tempest, like her or not, was going left unsaid. "Either go after her and bring her back, or let it go." She watched as Dom sat on the edge of the bed with a sigh.

"Maybe Vince'll find her. He's been good at that in the past."

"Who knows?"

Dom only shrugged in answer.


	44. Of Nerves and Finding Trouble

AN: I really like this chapter. Hope you all do too. Enjoy!

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Forty Four – **Of Nerves and Finding Trouble**

Tempest drove around until eleven thirty before she gave up on amusing herself. All she was doing was allowing thoughts of what had happened run through her head. Rehashing it with herself over and over again wasn't helping. No matter how many times she ran it through her head, she still saw herself acting the same way. She just couldn't allow someone to grab her and hold her when she didn't want to be held. It wasn't the way she was built. But when she allowed herself to look at the situation more objectively, she realized that she could have stepped back after she'd twisted her arm free, not after she'd pinned Dom to a wall by his neck. But controlling the threat had taken precedence, not merely getting free. Being the superior predator had been more important than mere escape. When it came to fight or flight, more often than not she picked fight.

She couldn't take it back now, what was done was done. So reliving it and rethinking it over and over again wouldn't help. But that realization didn't show her a way to make herself stop. She wasn't pissing off random strangers or having minor squirmishes with co-workers. She was getting physical with her cousin's friends. People he looked at as family. But it was still already done. So now she just had to find a way to live with it and not end up killing Dominic Toretto. Or being killed by the same. She parked the car behind Harry's store and climbed out. He walked up to her from one of the open garage doors.

"You're early."

"I've moved out of the Toretto residence and I haven't got anything better to do for the rest of the night," she answered Harry's statement more forthrightly than she had intended.

"What'd you mean moved out?"

Tempest told Harry the story, minus that part about her teasing Leon and watched his face blanch when she got to the part about her holding Dom against the wall.

"And he let you live to tell me the story?"

"He didn't want to. Vince held him back and Leon did the same to me and they forced us to separate. Then the more I thought about it the less ok I was with staying in his house. At least for a while."

"I guess I understand why. Well, why don't we get started since you're here? We'll go over where things are and how things are going to work."

"Sure, I don't have a better idea."

By the time twelve rolled around, Tempest was outfitted with a small 9mm handgun, a good idea where the drop point was and one Lotus Elise with the top down. Harry sent her off, following Jorge at ten after twelve. He'd asked her twenty odd times if she was sure she was ok with the job. He was aware that what he was asking of her wasn't what she did, or had ever done. But she'd proven that she had the skills to get away if she had to, and she seemed confident that she had the skills to protect herself as well.

Tempest followed the deadheading truck down the highway toward the abandoned service station they were picking the trailer up at. She idly hummed along with the radio as she drove on autopilot, still unable to turn her mind away from the situation she found herself in at Jesse's house.

Dominic hadn't known that she hated to be touched, for the most part. That she could only tolerate it from those she wanted to tolerate it from and on her own terms. How fast she'd become accepting of Vince's touch had shocked her, and how ok she was with both touching Leon and being touched by him was strange too. Jesse was a different matter all together because he was family. Dom wasn't family and she wasn't ok with him either. So his hands on her drove her crazy, and not in a good way. She knew it was one of her quirks, her dislike of physical contact, but she couldn't help it. It was part of her. And it was only worse when the unwanted contact was to hold her back against her will. She had a very defined personal space bubble and people entering it put her on edge.

She was willing to admit she over reacted, but not that she hadn't had a right to a reaction of some sort. Perhaps she shouldn't have pinned Dominic by the throat. It had been a violent, blood thirsty, visceral reaction to his actions. But she wouldn't agree that she hadn't been entitled to shake his grip off of her person if she wasn't willing to have his touch or stay where he wanted her to stay. The whole situation was made even worse by Vince.

She wouldn't tell Dom she was sorry because it would get back to Vince she'd humbled herself to Dom over doing something she'd told Vince was perfectly justified. She had to figure Vince would look for any way to use that to his own advantage to get his own back at her. She knew he couldn't be nearly as ok with her as he was letting on. Not when he figured she was sleeping with Leon behind his back and lying to him about it. Before she could analyze the situation any further, the fact that Jorge was signalling to exit the freeway brought her abruptly out of her dream world. She snapped her blinker on quickly and followed the tractor truck down the exit ramp. The abandoned station was ahead of them about half a mile on the right hand side of the road. Tempest allowed Jorge to stay out front and pull onto the lot ahead of her.

The other truck and trailer were already parked beside the crumbling building. The truck was idling, its diesel engine filling the night air with a deep rumble and the pungent odour of burnt diesel fuel. Jorge parked close to the other truck, but not right beside it. Tempest parked the Elise on the other side of Jorge, putting the truck's cabin between her small car and the other tractor trailer. She stayed put in the car until Jorge was firmly on the ground. Only then did she immerge from the tiny convertible. She wasn't scared, more slightly nervous. But she was smart enough to know that Harry hadn't picked Jorge for his looks. The Latino man was short and stocky, tattooed and talked with enough street in his voice to tell her that he was more than capable of watching her back and his own. With her own good instincts, and Jorge to watch out for her, she felt very secure.

"Shall we go meet the other side and get this over with?" Tempest asked Jorge as they met between their vehicles.

"Yeah, the sooner the better. Harry still has to get all the shit off the truck tonight."

"Ok, let's do this." They started around the nose of Jorge's truck, Jorge walking just a step ahead of Tempest. It made it clear that she was the boss and he was the hired tough there to function as her protection. Tempest was fairly sure no one in their right mind would mess with the heavily armed, heavily muscled Mexican. He wasn't tall, but he sure made up for it in attitude and build. Confidence rolled off him in waves, and she hoped it would cover up the vague sense of unease she was sure was gently wafting off her. She put a swish in her walk and hoped it looked like she dealt with criminals to buy stolen parts every day. She didn't want anything to go wrong. There was a vague sense of something wrong in the air and she could sense it, but she tried to chalk it up to her nerves.

When she saw who was sitting on the stepside boards of the other truck's cabin, she knew she should have listened to her gut. For there sat Vince, and beside him leaned Bryce. When their eyes met, shock to mirror that in her own registered in Vince's. Like they each knew it would be very bad for the other man with Vince and Jorge to know they knew each other, they kept this information to themselves. But Tempest knew she'd have to be blind and stupid to miss the anger pouring off Vince.

"How we doin' this?" Jorge asked the two men in front of him.

"Where's the money?" Bryce asked by way of an answer.

Jorge nodded her way. "We brought the money. Before you get the money you show the chica the stuff is real."

Bryce took in the duffle slung over Tempest's shoulder and moved around to the back of his rig with a shrug. He popped the double doors at the back open and stepped out of the way. Vince was still frozen by incredulousness by the door of the truck, he noted.

Tempest crossed the rest of the asphalt covered expanse between her position and the rear doors of the trailer. When she reached Bryce he offered a hand to help her up into the trailer. She took it on instinct alone and let him swing her up into the dark shadows of the well packed boxes of merchandise. Bryce swung up with her. Jorge gave him a dirty look and moved to grab the .357 out of his waistband, but a shake of Tempest's head steadied him.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Bryce asked softly in a sing song voice that belayed the real worry he was dealing with.

"Buying a load of illegally obtained merchandize for a friend. I could ask you the exact same thing," she sing-songed back out of the corner of her mouth.

"Selling a load of the same." Bryce couldn't help the smirk that lifted a corner of his mouth. "I've never seen Vince shocked totally speechless before. You know he's fit to be tied right now, right? I thought he was gonna piss himself when _you_ rounded the corner of that truck."

"I thought I was going to die of shock when I saw the two of you, so I guess we're even."

"Not even close, baby doll. He's done nothing but rant about you and how you left him for Leon all night. And about how you beat Dom up in the dining room earlier."

"Well, I never left him for Leon. He slept with me and then tried to pick Mia up in front of me again, right afterward. What was I suppose to do? Take him home to meet my family?"

Bryce sighed. "He's the most stubborn, thick skulled person I've ever met."

"No kidding. And now he's ready to kill me and that's before he finds out I packed my shit and decided to move out of Dom's house after what happened."

"Great! I don't want to be around him after this is over. I think I'll find a nice bar to relax in. And not one where he might show up, either."

"Good luck with that." As they talked in hushed tones, Tempest had made it a point to look into a box here and a crate there. Everything seemed to be in order. Of course, as soon as she'd seen Vince and Bryce, she had figured there really would be stolen car parts. When they reached the back of the trailer, this time it was to find Vince standing with Jorge, the two heavily built men eyeing each other warily. Both of them reached up to help her down, but the much taller Vince got a hold of her waist faster and much more easily than Jorge was capable of. He swung her down to the ground as if she was a feather, setting her on her feet with a gentle touch that was not mirrored in his eyes. His hands lingered on her waist a moment longer than necessary and her fingers explored his shoulders for just as long. His muscles were tense under her palms. He was livid with her.

Tempest knew she had to keep up the façade of not knowing them for the sake of the other man working with them and for Jorge. "Ok, it all seems to be in order. One of you can help Jorge change the trailer over to our truck and we'll deal with the payment while that's being done." Tempest motioned for Jorge to go move the truck, and Vince motioned for the extra man with him to go help. As soon as it was just she, Bryce and himself, he grabbed her by her upper arm and walked her some distance away from the rear of the trailer.

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

"Making some easy money. How was I supposed to know it was you that I'd be dealing with?"

"What if it wasn't? What if it was some guy who'd just as soon kick the shit out of you and leave you for dead as look at you?"

"I've proven time and time again I can take care of my own Vince. I can handle myself in a situation like this. I'm not exactly unarmed."

"Your razor blade tongue doesn't count in this case, Trouble."

"Whatever Vince. Just count the damn money so it looks like you don't trust me and let me and Jorge get out of here."

The anger on Vince's face intensified. Not only had she done something so incredibly stupid as to take on a job like this with no experience, now she was giving him attitude when he pointed out how dumb it had been for her to do it in the first place? "When this is all done and you leave the truck with Harry—and don't even bother trying to tell me it isn't Harry you're doing this for—you will follow me home and we will deal with this."

"I'm not calling Dom's home anymore. I'm staying elsewhere tonight and that's not up for debate or negotiations. I made up my mind. I will not accept Dom's charity if it means accepting him thinking he has the right to put his hands on me. Has the right to hold me against my wishes."

"Don't even think you're going to walk away from this Trouble."

"Is the money all there?" Tempest asked Bryce with a sigh.

"Yeah," he answered reluctantly. He wasn't too hot on the idea of getting in the middle of their argument.

"Ok, then, as Jorge has the trailer transferred over, I'll be leaving. See you fellas around." Tempest headed toward the Elise with a purposeful walk.

"I mean it. Wait for me at the 'Edge, Temp."

She didn't justify his order with an answer or even a reaction, she just kept walking. She got in the car, started it, and left the lot with a squeal before pulling over to wait for Jorge to get the truck out of the parking lot and underway on the road.


	45. Of Highways and Headstrong Women

**AN: Beware the bad language. There is a lot of it. :D BTW, I love Bryce. I created him to be just a guy in a bar for one scene. And now I have much bigger plans for him because he's the new hotness. I hate it when my bit characters grow lives of their own. This chapter features some angry Vince. I also love angry Vince. :D Enjoy.**

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Forty Five – **Of Highways and Headstrong Women**

Before Vince knew it, he was watching the taillights of her truck disappear around a bend in the freeway. "Fuckin' son of a whore cock suckin' bitch!" he cursed, just as soon as it was just he and Bryce at the abandoned station. "What was she thinking?"

"I dunno. But by the time you get the truck back to Stephen, you're not going to catch her at the 'Edge unless she wants you to." When Vince realised Bryce was right, an even pithier string of curses rained from his lips.

"I'm going to make her wish she was never born when I get my hands on her, the little moron."

I don't want nothin' to do with this from this point out," Bryce answered. "It's between you'n her. Don't drag me into it."

"Let's take the damn truck back to Stephen and I'll try to figure it out from there."

When Tempest arrived back at The Racer's Edge she parked the car in the open bay and got out. She wandered over to where Harry was talking to Jorge and heard the Latin man talking about how well she'd handled herself. When she walked up to them Jorge excused himself to go help the rest of his crew unload the trailer into the rear of the store.

"So, Jorge says you handled yourself like a pro."

"It would have been really bad if I hadn't," Tempest told him, her face pinching with distaste.

"Why's that?"

"The people handling the deal for the other side?"

"Yeah?"

"Vince and his best friend Bryce. To say seeing me show up was the last thing they expected was the understatement of the century. Vince is likely to skin me alive if he gets his hands on me."

"What're you going to do?" Harry asked. He looked more than mildly worried on her behalf.

"Run like hell, find a place to hole up, and hope he doesn't find me until he's calmed down."

"If he's hooked up with the guy I bought this stuff from, he's a lot higher up than I ever would have given Vince credit for." Harry fished around in his wallet. "Here, this is the card for a nightclub I own. Its open late and I doubt Vince would ever think to look for you there. His focus'll be on hotels and motels. Hang out at the club for a few hours and by the time you find a place to stay, he'll have given up and gone home to bed." He left out the part where he doubted very much she could find a place to crash that he couldn't find her at via her name in the computerized register. Who ever would have given Vince credit for being smart enough to pull off the position it seemed he had?

"Thanks Harry."

"Least I can do. Here's your money." Harry handed her a stack of bills. "I added a little extra for the extra hassle you're going to have now that the team is involved."

"I actually had fun, until I saw Vince sitting on that truck," Tempest answered with an impish smile. "And even then, the look on his face was priceless, and it was even better when Bryce told me he nearly pissed himself when he saw me. They did underestimate me." She checked her cell phone for the time. "Shit, he was going to try to find me here. I better take off before I give him time."

"Catch you later. I'll be talking to you about the Elan midweek."

"Don't remind me I have to spend more time around Dom and his garage to fix your backwards car, Harry."

"Not like yours is any less backward!" Harry called after her retreating back. He chuckled as she flipped him off over her shoulder before getting into her car and taking off with a wave for him to take the sting out of her flipping him the bird. When she was gone, Harry moved to watch the unloading of his truck with a sigh. She'd dug herself in pretty deep if Vince knew what she'd been up to. Not to mention the visit he was likely to have from the volatile man. He had to doubt very much that Vince would take his involving her well.

_Well, you've really done it this time_, she mused to herself as she followed the directions on the back of the card Harry had given her. Harry's idea was a sound one. She would waste some of her money and kill some time at his club and hope that Vince gave up on finding her in the mean time. When she arrived in the parking lot of the club, aptly named 'Racing Royalty' she parked between a Hummer and Escalade. She hoped the two huge trucks would block the views of her car and keep it hidden from anyone who might be looking for it. It was one huge drawback to having such a rare, intricately painted vehicle. It was hard to miss. Before she got out she thought about what she had on. There was no way she was going into a dance club in what she had on.

Before she gave up and left, she remembered all her stuff was in the back seat. She got up on her knees and turned around in her seat after she turned on the overhead light. Then she started to paw through her bags. There wasn't really enough light for her to see what she was finding, even with the dome light on. She found her heeled boots easily enough, and finally found a pair of black fitted flair bottom pants. She wiggled out of her combat pants, tossed them and her Cat boots onto the passenger side floor, wiggled into her dressier pants and put her boots on. She finger combed her hair out of its braid and looked at her top with distain. She couldn't go in there in a wifebeater. She realized what she could do in an instant. She grabbed her utility tool from between the front seats and flipped the blade out. That done, she held the shirt away from her body and stabbed through it just under her breasts. She used the hole as a place to start and tore the bottom half of her shirt off. Then she sliced a slash through it over her chest on a diagonal slant. _Instant skank top_, she mused with a grin. Using what was left of the bottom of her shirt, she made a band of black cotton to tie around her neck and a thick cuff for each wrist. Thus properly attired, she climbed out of the car and armed the security before walking up to the door. There was a huge line, but on instinct she went straight to the bouncer at the door. She showed him the card with a grin. "Harry sent me and told me you guys would take good care of me."

Either Harry had called ahead of her or her name dropping had simply worked. She was admitted without a fuss, no line up to wait in and no cover to pay. Once she was in she bought a drink and looked around the place. She didn't see a soul she knew, which perhaps wasn't surprising considering she wasn't from around and had mostly hung out with Jesse since her arrival.

She was looking off to the right when someone tapped on her left shoulder. When she turned to look she found Craig Everett standing at her elbow.

"Imagine finding you here," he said with a grin.

"Harry sent me," she replied with a grin before she could think better of it. Tempest some how knew that admitting what she'd been doing for Harry or why she'd needed to hide would be a bad thing. After all, now if she told anyone what she'd been doing she'd be implicating Vince and Bryce along with herself. "I had to blow Dom off for a night, and Harry told me that this wasn't Dom's scene."

"I think Harry was right. I've never seen him here."

"Thank god. We had a bit of an incident tonight and I definitely don't want my neck within grabbing range any time soon."

"That bad huh?"

"All that and Vince too! What can I say?" Tempest asked with a smirk, holding her arms out to the sides, palms up.

Craig laughed. He couldn't help himself. "You're one lucky girlie, aren't you?"

"Yeah, I guess lucky'd be one word for it. Maybe not the one I'd pick, but it sure is one word for it." She finished her drink and turned around to order another.

Craig waited until she had her drink in her hand. "So, you come here to stand there all night, or are you going to dance at some point?"

"You tryin' to ask me to dance with you?"

"If I were, would you say yes?"

"If you think you can keep up, I'll give you a shot."

Vince flew along the freeway on his way to finish his job for the evening so he could go find Tempest and teach her a lesson about getting involved in things she didn't understand. He didn't really expect her to be waiting for him at Harry's but he couldn't help but hope that just this once, she would have listened to him. He left the truck with his bewildered boss, whom he normally chatted with for at least a few minutes after a job and tore off in his own car. Bryce hanging on for dear life in the passenger seat.

"Slow down V. You and I both know there's no way that girl waited for you where you told her to. Even if she'd planned on staying at Harry's all night, she wouldn't now, just because you told her to."

Vince couldn't help the small smile he felt tugging at his mouth. Bryce was right. That didn't make him slow the Maxima's wild flight down the road so much as a mile an hour. "She can't be left loose alone in Los Angeles."

"If she didn't wait with Harry, how in god's name are you going to find her?"

"I dunno. But I'll have to try. I'm so tempted to take her over my knee and spank her like the three year old she acts like."

"She handled herself pretty good."

"Please don't tell me you're on her side?"

"I don't have a side. For god's sake, I don't want to be in the middle of this. But she did manage to handle herself pretty well."

"Who knows if she would have if she hadn't known us?" Bryce only shrugged in answer and Vince let it go. He pulled up to Harry's store and found the place deserted, just like he'd pretty much known he would. A quick call to a few people he knew told him she hadn't checked into a hotel or motel under her own name in the greater Los Angeles area. He sighed heartily. She couldn't make even this one thing easy.

"We're going to spend the foreseeable future driving around trying to find her, aren't we?" Bryce asked with a sigh of his own.

"I could take you to your bike first." Vince looked over at his friend with an eyebrow raised in question.

"And find out you killed her, or vice versa, when you found her. No thank you."

"Then yeah, we're gonna spend some time trying to find her."

They tried Hector's club, and on a hunch, Edwin's, both with no sign of her. They tried 'their' bar, but as Vince had said to Bryce on the way, she was 'too damn smart to show up there.' It hit Vince like a slap in the face as they were driving around down town. "Harry's club. Bet he thinks I don't know about it. He could get her in fast, send her there. Fuck, he'd feel like he owed her because she only got caught on account of him."

"Worth a shot. We're never going to randomly stumble across her."

Vince turned the back toward Harry's store. The club wasn't even all that far away. They drove past the building first.

"I don't see her car V. Maybe she just ran off to hide someplace. Let's give it up."

"No. She's here. I can feel it. I'm just gonna drive around the parking lot."

"This is stupid V. She's ok and she doesn't want to be around you. Why do you have to take it so personal?"

"Because she could have gotten herself killed tonight. Twice. Once for being so stupid as to get involved in a physical battle with Dominic and once for thinking she was in the league necessary to make deals for stolen shit. Fuck! She's a god damn mechanic from nowhere in Canada for Christ's sake. What the fuck could she possibly know about this kind of shit?"

"Enough to move a car in ways I know I'll never master, and seem comfortable enough packing heat around with her while she's at it." Vince was seriously pissed off. The extent of it worried Bryce in a lot of ways. Vince was hot headed, stubborn, and opinionated. All of the above only got amplified when he was in a raging temper. It seemed that 'Trouble' stepping outside the realm of what he wanted her to do pushed the definition of seriously pissed off to new heights. But the little girl hadn't been totally helpless.

"Don't you go encouraging her to act stupid. I'll kick the shit outta you when I'm done tanning her ass so red she doesn't sit for days."

"Yeah, cause it worked out real well the last time you tried to kick the shit outta me."

"I wasn't this pissed off then."

Bryce only shrugged. He was reasonable confident that Vince wouldn't get in a fight with him over what the girl had done. He watched Vince cut the wheel hard left as the Maxima slid into the parking lot with a squeal. Circling the second tier, he cursed softly under his breath. There was her car. Fuck! He didn't know what Vince was going to do, but he was willing to bet it wouldn't be pretty.

"Bingo. Told you she was here." Vince parked the car with a smug smirk.

"So now what? What're you gonna do? Drag her out of the place against her will in front of two thousand people you don't know?"

"I dunno what I'm gonna do when I get my hands on her, but I do know she can't get away with thinking this was a good idea."

"You're not her father, or her brother, or even her cousin. You're _certainly_ not her boyfriend. So what gives you the right to tell her what she can and can't do?" Bryce knew were he anyone else, he'd be busily picking up his teeth off the ground. But Vince, despite his big words, knew that starting a fight between the two of them could well be biting off more than he could chew. They were more evenly matched than anyone knew, and any brawl between them had a fifty fifty shot of going either way. Plus, when Vince was really angry he got sloppy. Not so as the average person stupid enough to fight him would notice. But Bryce had had his back in one too many fights not to know how to exploit his weaknesses. Of course, that was a two way street.

"I don't care what rights you think I got or don't got."

The reason for all the anger finally dawned on him and he felt like slapping his forehead for missing it for so long. "She scared you so instead of dealing with how that makes you feel you're gonna take it out on her." Bryce nodded in mock understanding. "Makes sense," he finished sarcastically.

"Either shut up or go home."

Bryce shook his head, but he got out of the car and followed Vince to the door of the club. He cursed fate for the same reason Vince thanked it. That Vince was well enough known around the import racing scene that they were let in instantly. There was no question of them waiting in line, and even if the place was a hundred people over capacity already, a member of Dominic Toretto's team was not going to be the person told to go away and come back later.

Pop music was thick on the air inside. The place was packed for a Tuesday night. The dance floor was filled with people gyrating to the beat of yet another song more heavy beats than talent as multicoloured lights blinked and twirled and strobe lights flashed. Bryce headed for the bar. The whole idea of dance music and light shows filled him with revulsion. He fought the need to groan as he looked around. What a place to find himself. He figured that if there was ever a situation he needed a drink to get through, it was this one. The girl wouldn't be far from her beloved car. And that meant she was here somewhere. And when Vince found her, the sparks were going to fly like water on magnesium.

He could actually pinpoint the second Vince found her in the crowd. Personally, Bryce saw the guy she was dancing with first. He was quite tall, and towered over not only Tempest, but most of the other guys on the floor as well. But Vince didn't see the tall man Tempest was dancing with, not if Bryce was reading the situation correctly. No, his eyes had settled on the woman first and hadn't moved yet. Bryce took a deep pull of his beer and waited for the show to get underway. He just hoped that this wouldn't be yet another situation he found himself responsible for keeping Vince from killing someone in.


	46. Of Broom Closets and Bowie Knives

AN: This chapter is full of swearing, and perhaps an M amount of adult themes. Doesn't it sound yummy? LOL. I still love Bryce. Can't help myself. :D I attempt to update every five days. But in those five days I also try to write another few thousand words so that I'm always writing about sixty or so thousand words ahead of where I'm posting. So if I don't find time to write, sometimes I don't update. Sometimes I get so much response right away that I update quicker. Five days is the average I'm striving for. I'm hoping it'll give me time to have this story written and the first half of part two done as well before I start posting part two. And the reason why there've already been two Saturdays is because she arrived on one. She's staying just over two weeks in actual fact. She arrived on a weekend, there's one in the middle, and she thinks she's going home on the Monday following what is her third weekend in the US. But we'll see. I've already written the first forty pages of part two…I also really like part two. It might just be better than this story, in my most humble opinion. Anywho…Enjoy. T

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Forty Six – **Of Broom closets and Bowie Knives**

Sweating under the lights, the only thought on Tempest's mind after five double rum and cokes and an hour of straight flat out dancing was not falling on her ass. It wasn't so much Craig keeping her attention as her love of dancing to hip hop. The fact he was good didn't hurt, but he really could have been any guy who knew where his hands went and what his feet and hips were supposed to do.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she was going to have to drive her car where ever she ended up crashing because she wouldn't leave it overnight in a parking lot. She knew she had only planned on having one drink or maybe two while she killed time. So how she ended up nicely buzzing and dancing with a nice looking guy she knew was off limits was beyond her comprehension. Craig executed a particularly intricate move and it took all her concentration to follow his lead. She tossed her hair out of her face in irritation, and the tumbled curls danced around her head.

"So, am I keeping up ok?" Craig leaned down to ask in her ear.

"You're ok," she called back with a smile.

Craig answered with a smile of his own. He happened to look around the room and almost did a double take when he saw who was standing between the door and the bar. "You're in trouble," he sing songed down at his companion. "Don't look, but guess who just walked in and is busy staring at us?"

"You've gotta be shittin' me?"

"Nope. You should likely pull a disappearing act."

"He's by the only door out that doesn't have a fire alarm attached, and you can bet he planned it that way. Besides, I can't drive right now and I can't leave the car out there all night."

"Then I would suggest you are going to be having it out with one very upset looking male person named Vince. Maybe you should go to the bar and order a drink. Pretend you don't know he's here. Better if he doesn't actually get within grabbing distance if you're with me."

"You're likely right. I'll be ok. I can handle Vince. I'd rather not, but I can do it."

Craig smirked. "I never had any doubts. Thanks for the dance, and I'll see you tomorrow night?"

"You know it." With a wave, Tempest headed off the dance floor and walked up to the bar. She ordered when the bartender looked her way and waited for her drink. When she realized who was on the bar stool beside her, she did a double take before a grin lifted her lips. "You too, huh?"

"Dragged along for the ride. How you been?"

"Kinda busy. You?"

"Oh, you know, worried about keeping V out of jail. Otherwise ok. He's out for your blood."

"I kinda figured. I didn't figure on him finding me here though. I wouldn't have gotten quite so buzzed had I known. I can't even sneak out the back and take off."

Bryce shrugged. "He'd find you anyway."

"Yeah. It'll be even worse since I was dancing with Craig when he got here. He'll be pissed and jealous. Never a good combination with V." Tempest turned around to lean on the bar as she stared out over the dancing crowd. She gulped her drink. "So, he's really mad huh?"

"Livid. _What_ were you _thinking_?"

"That five thousand dollars for half an hours work was too good to say no to."

Bryce nodded and looked around. "Here he comes."

"Had to happen sooner or later. How much you wanna bet he was trying to get enough of a handle on himself that he knew he could look at me and not backhand me into next year?"

Bryce laughed. "Well, get himself in check sure. But he'd never backhand a girl. Not Vince."

There was a hint of something serious in that statement, and Tempest knew it. But she was too drunk, and nervous over the coming confrontation to touch it right now. So she just nodded to show she had heard and agreed with the statement.

"Enjoying your evening?" Vince asked in a deceptively calm voice when he finally reached where they waited.

"It's ok," Tempest answered with a one shouldered shrug. "You?"

Vince didn't even bother trying to come up with an answer. "We need to talk." His eyes scanned the room. "Over there." He didn't for her answer either way. He took a hold of her upper arm, stood her up off her stool and started to march her toward a dark hall at the rear of the room.

"I take it I don't get a say in this, do I?" she asked, amusement at the situation colouring her voice. Vince was nothing if not predictable.

"What do you find funny?" Her finding humour in the situation made him so angry he didn't know how he was still functioning. He'd been pissed but had managed to get his temper under control before. When it became clear she found the situation less than serious, all the anger returned and then some.

"Nothing," she answered. A giggle hiccupped out of her against her will. _I should not have had so much to drink!_ "Ooops," she put a hand over her mouth and glanced up at him, her green eyes dancing with mirth.

"Do you know how easy it would have been for you to end this evening dead in a ditch someplace instead of hiding in a dance club, you little idiot?" Vince growled as he continued to drag her off the main club floor.

"Not as easy as you think. After all, you only knew I wasn't a pro at that kind of thing because you knew _me_."

She was right and it pissed him off even more. He would have sworn that was impossible but he guessed he would have been wrong. He couldn't get the image of her glistening skin out of his mind. And he couldn't forget her skin was dewy because she'd been dancing all over another man for the last hour. And she'd put her life in danger tonight. Twice. Because she was infuriating. And keeping her in some semblance of line would be a full time job for the rest of her life. For someone, he was quick to amend in his own head. Someone had to. But it wouldn't be him. Not in five short days. She'd be gone, and thankfully, she'd be gone back to somewhere there wasn't quite so much trouble for her to find. An image of her broken by someone stronger than her that had taken exception to her presence in a dangerous deal filled his mind. And all the anger came back and then some.

His grip on her arm tightened and he pushed her ahead of him down a darkened hall.

"Where are we goin'?" she asked in a conversational tone. The anger pouring off Vince would be very scary if she let herself dwell on it, so she was forcing herself to remain calm and collected. As much as she could with his fingers bruising her upper arm, that was.

"Someplace where no one will interrupt me while I yell at you," Vince growled back.

"And you hope to find this place in a crowded club?" The look he shot her at her insolent question told her without a doubt that she should have kept it to herself. Livid was far too tame a description for what Vince was. His grip on her arm was starting to actually hurt as he squeezed harder in his anger. He marched her further down the hall, which cumulated in three doors, all marked staff only. Vince seemed to pick one at random and shoved the door open. The open door revealed a supply closet/maintenance room.

Like every other wall in the place, the walls of the small room were painted a blue so deep it was almost black. There were shelving units filled with various cleansers and paper products against one wall, and a commercial mop in a yellow wheeled pail beside them. Other than those items, and a single small, high window which was longer than it was tall and mounted horizontally in the wall, the room was dark and empty. It wasn't all that much quieter than the rest of the club, but it was far enough removed to allow conversation without shouting. However, she knew Vince had found his goal. Were she to yell for assistance no one would hear her. He used the grip he still had on her arm to back her up against the wall opposite the shelves. He then caged her in, one hand flat on either side of her head as he crowded her. His fury, so far intruded into her personal space as he got right in her face made her edgy, and if she was honest, slightly nervous about what was about to go down. He was _furious_.

"I'm gonna ask one more time. What were you thinking, doing that for Harry?" He didn't allow her time to answer his question, carrying on with his rant instead. "I don't care how well you think you could have handled anything that came up. You're not involved in that world and you had no business playing with something you don't understand."

"I wasn't playing. I was made an offer too good to say no to and I took it. I was equipped to handle it, whether you want to hear it or not." Nervous or not, she wasn't about to start playing the damsel in distress now. If he didn't like how she chose to live her life, no matter where she was living it, he knew where the door was.

"Really? You were equipped to handle it?" His control over the desire to shake her violently was hanging on by a tenuous thread, rendering his question a snarled inquiry.

"Yes," she answered his question defiantly. "I was."

He had a point to prove. He couldn't have her thinking that she could manage such a situation. She couldn't, and he could be finding her dead right now, or be the one taking the phone call that the cops had found her broken body on the side of the road. And she had to know that was not acceptable. She had to know that she could not do that to him. To Jesse, he amended his thought. She could not do that to the kid. It would kill him. So better she learned the lesson now, from him, than the permanent and hard way from some thug in a dark, abandoned parking lot. He stood up straight but stayed too close to her to allow her to move away from him. He kept her pressed to the wall with his angry presence. "Take off that rag you have posing as a shirt."

"Excuse me?" Her pulse kicked into high gear at his growled order. She knew she should be outraged. Maybe a little scared too. And she was, a bit of each one. Unfortunately they were both overshadowed by a definite sense of anticipation for finding out what he was planning next. He was livid, she wasn't exactly calm herself. Where was it going to go as it played out?

"I said, take off that black rag before I take it off for you."

"No," she snapped back before thinking better of it. Even if she had thought it through, she figured her answer still would have been the same. No matter how forced her outrage in the face of his orders, she wasn't just going to cave in and do as he told her. Besides, she'd decided that she didn't want Vince anymore. Hadn't she? Of course she had, she reassured herself. So there was no way she was going to take off her clothes because he told her to. And just as that thought registered, he had her shirt bottom in one hand and her two wrists in his other. He always managed to move so fast for such a large man. Before she could do much more than sputter in rage, her shirt was over her head and on the floor behind him. She fought her urge to cross her arms in front of her chest. She still had on a black bra, for crying out loud. He wasn't really seeing anything. "What do you think you're doing?" she snarled. Whether she was secretly enjoying herself or not, she wasn't going to let on to him she was. And her anger was still very much real. Anger and desire were quite capable of mixing into one substance akin to nitrous for her blood, she was swiftly finding. She wondered if it was the same for him, and if it was, what was going to occur when the two burns collided.

"Take off your pants," he ordered instead of answering. "Now."

"I think not," she snapped back. "This has gone quite far enough."

"Maybe you didn't hear me. I said, take off your pants, now."

"I heard you just fine. I simply said no. I'm not taking my clothes off for you because I'm not having sex with you. Therefore, my clothes are staying on. We don't need to be naked to have this fight, so just fuckin' spit it out already. Whatever the fuck you wanna say, say it and go fuck yourself."

He ignored her angry taunt with difficulty and chose to exhibit this feigned indifference to her by repeating his earlier order rather than addressing what she'd said. "Either take off your pants or I'll take them off for you. And if that's the route you take, I'll guarantee you that you won't be wearing them back out of here." He didn't really intend to have sex with her any more than she said she planned on letting him. He was only out to make a point, the point that if a man wanted to force her into things, wanted to hurt her or worse, there would be little she could do about it. That no matter how strong she figured she was, or how tough, when she was outweighed by a hundred pounds, she'd be at someone else's mercy. He took a half step closer to her and took hold of the top of her tight cotton flairs.

She knew he was easily capable of ripping them off her. And then what would she do? She couldn't walk out of the club in a ripped up wifebeater and panties. There wasn't enough bravado in the world to pull that off. Still, she was not doing anything against her will, much to her chagrin. She figured she had to know part of what had always drawn her to Vince was his dominant personality and she was being treated to a huge dose of it right now. Even though her mind knew it would be far better to keep on fighting him off, showing him she didn't want what he was offering, her body still knew that with him was where satisfaction was. Reluctantly, because she hated to give him his way, no matter how much she wanted to give in to him for her own benefit, she moved to bend over to take off her boots in preparation for taking her pants off. She really couldn't afford to let him tear her only pants off her body. She'd never make an escape then.

"Leave the shoes," he ordered gruffly.

Never breaking eye contact, she started to wiggle out of her black low rise pants. She allowed him to see that he hadn't broken her, that she wasn't giving in to his will so much as saving herself the humiliation of leaving the room in her panties because of his inability to make a point without violence. When she got her pants down so far they caught around her boots and she had to bend over to stretch the material over the tops of her shoes. She did her left leg before moving to the right, finally breaking eye contact with him so she could focus on the task at hand, bent over to reach her shoes.

And when she stood back up she had a handful of his hair being used to pull his head backward to expose his neck and a wicked looking hunting knife pressed to his jugular before he could blink, though he did manage to do so in shock after the fact, she noted. She backed him around so that he had his back to the wall, reversing their positions. He lifted his hand to grab her wrist and she pressed slightly harder on the knife. He felt the blade kiss his skin hard enough to sting but yet not hard enough to draw blood. "Move any way that I don't tell you to and I'll slice you well enough to put you down. Understand?"

He didn't acknowledge her in any way, but he didn't make any more movements her way either. His eyes flashed angrily in the dim light from the moon outside the single high window. If she'd thought he was hellishly pissed before, she'd had no idea. But somehow, being the one with the weapon made her feel much more secure about her position. "Now, given that I'm holding you to the wall with a bowie knife, I think you'd have to agree that I wasn't helpless now, and I wasn't without the skill to protect myself then, either."

Standing in front of him in a black lacy bra and a scrap of black something with a lot of strings pretending to cover the rest of her, holding a huge knife on him, she was the hottest thing he'd ever seen. He was so angry he was seeing red, but she was still the hottest female he'd ever seen in his whole life. He couldn't deny it. She had a knife to his throat, she'd caught him with his proverbial pants down because he hadn't expected her to have a weapon on her, and he should be deeply embarrassed. Yet, he wasn't. He was mad and not just with anger, though he was still infuriated with her. He was also mad with a need to reverse their positions and use that knife to cut the necessary straps to take the scrap of black off her lower body and have her right there in the supply closet of a dance club with the throbbing beat of dance music washing over them.

_There_ was the anger at himself that he knew he should have been feeling back when she'd surprised him with the knife. He was more mad at himself for wanting her again than he was for letting her get past his defences with a weapon. He had planned this as a lesson that would go only as far as her acknowledging that she easily could have been forced to do things she would never want to do, and would never recover from being forced into before she was killed or left for dead by the very people who had perpetuated violence against her. But now it had gone beyond that. Now he wanted her again more than he wanted to teach her a lesson. But what to do about it while she had him pinned with a sharp object millimetres away from his jugular, and he still wanted to spank her a great deal, he didn't know just yet.

Tempest decided a little turning of the tables was in order. "Take off your shirt," she ordered as a smirk teased up the corners of her mouth. Turning the game around on him lessened some of her anger. Turnabout was fair play, didn't they say? When he didn't move to comply, the smirk left her face. "Unless you want to be explaining to Bryce why you're shirtless and bleeding when you leave this room, you had better do as I asked. Otherwise, I will cut the shirt off of you and make sure the knife cuts your skin for my trouble."

She almost seemed upset with him enough to do it too, he noted. Much for the same reasons as she had obeyed him, he did as she asked and pulled his tank up and over his head. It was more out of the self serving desire to have less clothes between their skin than any genuine fear of her. And then, taking advantage of the fact she had had to move the knife away from his neck to allow him to remove his shirt, he grabbed her wrist, twisted it and grabbed the knife as it fell from her limp hand as she whimpered softly in pain and shock. He _hated_ to hurt her—so much so that it sickened him slightly—but he hated to have a dangerous looking blade pressed to his skin worse. In a flash their positions were reversed again and he had her crowded against the cinderblock wall again.

"You got anything else sharp hidden someplace that I should know about?" he growled.

She shook her head no, feeling a small measure of true fright for the first time all night. She had held him at knifepoint and threatened to cut him and now her only security measure, the knife, was in his hands. She had threatened to cut his skin with it and now he had the weapon, not her. All the clothes she had left were her underwear and a pair of clunky boots and she'd made him take off half of his clothes. She was definitely feeling some fear, but it wasn't over what he would do to her with the knife. It was more a fear that they were going to have sex again, and there was nothing either of them could do about it. Not when they'd already gotten so rough with each other. It was like foreplay between them, and it was obvious from the way they were both breathing heavily and eyeing each other. The fear was largely because she had no idea what it was going to do to the fragile repairs of her very self that she had barely completed after the last time he had used her and tossed her away so hard and quickly it shattered her inside. Not that she could admit that out loud, and not that she could deny herself the animalistic passion she could sense was about to be unleashed between them. She did spare a moment to regret her lack of self control. Then she resigned herself to the inevitable.

Normally totally in tune with her emotions, even if he was blind to what they meant most of the time, at this point his lust blinded him to her genuine fear. All he could sense and see and feel was desire. He slid her blade against her skin, under her panties and used the sharp tip of the knife to cut both black straps crossing her hips. The shredded cloth fell to the floor. The feel of the cool metal knife against the flesh of her hips made her shudder as her breath hitched.

He pressed the hand he still had fisted around the knife handle against the wall slightly above and to the right of her head. His free hand he slid over her hip, down to rub across the slight convexity of her belly before sliding lower. As he touched her in all the right ways, her head fell back against the wall with a moan. When he realized their fight had done the same thing to her as it had to him, some emotion hit him in the gut with the force of a well placed kick. There was too much emotion between them, but fuck him if he could do anything about it now.

She couldn't hide what she wanted. Not from herself and not from him. The need to have him again was too great. He was touching her in all the right ways to make sure her self protecting resistances melted away and he likely didn't even know he was doing it. When she exposed her neck to him he lowered his head and bit her on the pad of flesh where her shoulder and neck joined. It was a dominance move, and she knew it, but he kept it so gentle, so careful to only hint at what he could do and ensure his touch only drove her further into a fog of desire instead that a moan escaped her again. She heard something metallic hit the floor and opened her eyes reluctantly. Her knife was discarded on the floor beside them and the hand that had been holding it was now cupping the side of her face.

"Tell me to stop," there was a subtle begging tone to his voice which was unfamiliar. "I promised myself that I wouldn't do this to you again, no matter how much I wanted to. But I can't stop myself right now Trouble. This wasn't what I planned when I took you down here, I swear to you. But looking at you like this," he paused as his eyes scanned the moonlit, luminous expanse of her almost totally bare skin, "I can't do the right thing and stop on my own. But if you tell me to, if you tell me that I'm a fuckin' prick for what I did and that you want me to leave you alone, I don't care if it kills me. I'll do it. So please, tell me you want me to stop."

He was so beautiful to her, standing there in the faint light, begging her not to let him break her again that her heart melted just a little. She wanted nothing else more than she wanted to feel like she belonged in his arms. And when things were right between them, they were always right enough to ensure that she felt like in his arms was where she was made to be. "But I don't want you to stop." It was her turn to press her hand to his cheek. "I would have been fighting you off tooth and nail if I did. And no matter what you think, you'd be at least hurting in several places to show for it. So no, I don't want you to stop." She watched with a kind of breathless impatience as his mouth slowly lowered toward hers. As their mouths fused and his hands fisted in her hair as he pressed into her space, she lowered a hand toward the zipper of his pants.

He cradled her to him once her feet were back on terra ferma and felt her shudder as the cool air of the room blew over her overheated, damp skin. He hated himself just a little in that moment, as she rested her head on his chest as though it was made to be there. Yet his arms still held her close and all he could think of was getting her home, tucking her into his bed and holding her where he knew she'd be safe for what was left of the night. Unable to fight the motion, he kissed her forehead softly. Her eyes flickered open.

"We should get back to Bryce before he comes looking for which ever one of us is still alive and to offer his services to move the body," he said in a low tone, unable to keep the contentment out of his voice. Hate himself for the action or not, he never felt better than after he'd been with her. It was more than just sexual gratification, and the whole concept of that scared the hell out of him. But it was like a moth to a flame. He knew it was bad for him on the whole, and knew he shouldn't even think about touching something so deadly, but damned if he could help himself anyway.

"Um," she answered on a yawn, stretching sinuously against his chest. "It's late."

"You're right, it is. Now, let's just find your clothes."

She giggled. "Your shirt is hanging off the mop handle."

"Good to know," he answered, before snagging the shirt and pulling it on. He then picked up her knife and slid it back into the sheath tucked into the top of her boot. He picked her things up off the floor while he was crouched and handed them to her.

The fact that he'd rearmed her after she'd used her knife against him touched her in some way. He had set out to teach her a humiliating lesson about what he perceived her limits were. There had been no kindness in the gesture either. It had been purely self serving on his part. And she'd returned the favour by putting a knife to his most venerable vein and threatening to use it, with some seriousness. She might not have cut his jugular but she certainly would have cut his skin and drew blood if he'd pushed her. And he had to know that. Yet, he'd given her back her knife without so much as a word of caution. She redressed herself in her pants and wifebeater, lost in thought. He was always doing that one thing that started to nullify all the asshole things he'd done before. But still, how long until he shattered her this time? She had no idea where her panties had ended up and figured since they were wrecked, there wasn't much sense wasting a lot of time looking for them either. When she was dressed, Vince moved to open the door.

"He's going to know what we did," Tempest said as Vince hauled the door open.

Vince started to protest but stopped. She was right. She looked far too dreamy and her lips were far too red and swollen for having just come from a fight. And he was willing to bet he looked far too content and satisfied with himself to have just tanned her ass as he'd threatened. But what was done was done. "He knew we were going home to do the same thing on the night you met him, so I doubt he'll be too scandalized. Come on, it's time to go home."

They collected Bryce who gave her the once over but gave Vince a dirty, mean look before following them out the door. Vince tossed his keys at Bryce. "I'll get it back from you tomorrow." He turned to Tempest and held out his hand. She deposited her keys into his palm without a fight. She was too tired and still slightly too intoxicated to really want to drive. She allowed Vince to take the lead role once again and slid onto the passenger seat of her own car. Once Vince was in and settled she looked up at him.

"There is a condition to you getting to both drive my car and take me with you where ever we're going."

"Oh, and what's that?"

"We are not going back to Dom's. No discussion, no debate, no nothing. I'm not going back there tonight. I told Jess I'd think about going back tomorrow. But I am not going back tonight."

"Temp, it's three am. Where else do you want to go?"

"Don't care, but it won't be back to Dom's."

"It's not exactly Dom's you know. It's where all of us live."

"If he gets to play lord and ruler of all he surveys than at least for tonight I'm not willing to stay there."

She delivered this assurance to the passenger side window, not to his face. Her arms were folded across her chest and she'd ground out the statement through her teeth. It was clear she was dead serious about her willingness to spend the night at their house. He refused to think of it as just Dom's because it was his home too. But none of that changed the fact that if he simply drove home he had no doubt she'd refuse to come into the house and they'd have a huge fight on the lawn that would end with her taking off, being in no shape to drive or not irrelevant.

"Fine," Vince answered on a sigh.


	47. Of Secrets and Motorola MixUps

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Forty Seven – **Of Secrets and Motorola Mix-ups**

Vince drove toward a motel that he knew was clean and safe. He made her wait in the car while he secured a room and when he came back to get her she was asleep in her seat. Not feeling half as put out as he should have about the necessity of it, he picked her up, carried her across the parking lot and into the room he'd been given. He set her on the bed and stood looking down at her. He never knew what to do with her while she was asleep when she shouldn't be. Did he wake her so she could change and get under the blankets, or just leave her the way she was and let her sleep straight through? Rather than decide right away, he left her for a moment and headed for the bathroom. He ran the shower as hot as he could take and got under, showering quickly and walking out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his hips. He leaned over her. She had rolled over toward the center of the bed and he wanted to get a look at her face to see if she was still asleep.

All he could figure was his wet hair must have dripped on her. She woke up, blinking sleepily and rubbing at her cheek. When she looked up at him, he watched the look of shock fill her eyes before the few hours previous came back to her. "Hey," she murmured sleepily once she realized she had authorized his presence in her room. Or in this room, as it were. She rolled onto her back and stretched lazily. "You took a shower already? How long was I asleep?"

"Do you want me to count the time you slept in the car, or just the amount of time we've been in this room?"

She didn't answer. She stuck her tongue out at him in irritation. "I'm too tired to take a shower. I'm just gonna go to sleep."

"Ok." He stood looking down at her.

"You gonna stand there all night, or are you coming to bed?"

"You sure you want me to stay?"

"Well duh! I said I'd let you stay if we didn't go back to Dom's didn't I?"

"Yeah," he answered. He walked around to the side of the double bed she wasn't on and lifted the covers before sliding in. He wasn't going to question staying put. Not if it meant he didn't have to find a ride home and stay up another hour before he could finally go to sleep. "So, you gonna sleep on top of the blankets in your clothes all night, or are you going to actually get in the bed?"

With a groan she kicked the blankets toward the foot of the bed and sat up to take her boots off. She figured given that she hadn't been awake to tell Vince to bring her things in, she was sleeping in her clothes. "I don't suppose you thought to bring my bags in with you?"

"What'd you mean, your bags?"

"The bags of my stuff in the back seat of the car."

"You packed up all your stuff? You took all your stuff and left the house? You didn't think you were ever going back?" Vince started to get visibly agitated.

"It had crossed my mind I wasn't, yes," Tempest answered primly. "And now I have nothing to wear to bed because someone ruined yet another article of my favourite clothing and didn't think to bring my bags in."

"I just finished having hot naked sex with you in a supply closet. I hardly think it's a huge concern if you sleep without clothes or not. It's not even like it'll be the first time."

With a shrug, she decided he was right. She turned the light off before she started to wiggle out of her pants and shirt. When she was done she tossed them on the floor before pulling the blankets up. She settled on her side facing away from Vince and relaxed onto the pillow with a weary sigh.

He gave her a few moments to be comfortable with the situation before he rolled up on his side behind her and tucked her back against his chest. After everything, he had to fight an urge to count her fingers and toes to prove to himself she was alright. He wasn't prepared to be so far away from her just yet. _Stupid little idiot_.

"I really can take care of myself. I've been doing it a long time," she whispered into the dark. Maybe because she was a girl, and maybe because she was always in tune the people around her, she knew what had brought on this bout of caring.

"Not in a place like this you haven't. Things happen in L.A. that the devil himself wouldn't touch Temp, and you tried to get involved in a little of that tonight. Don't ever do it again. Now go to sleep." Discomfort with the intense protective feelings he was having toward her made him gruffer and bossier than he had intended. He let it stand that way because he hoped it gave him a small measure of distance from the situation.

"Yes sire." She knew he couldn't see her face, even if there was enough light in the room, because her head was under his chin. She rolled her eyes anyway before yawning sleepily. She had reached the stage after drinking where sleep was the only thing that made sense. It claimed her swiftly, leaving no hint of consciousness. Just a simple slide from awake to not, unperceivable. Just there one moment and not the next, breathing evened out and deep, one hand folded under her cheek and the other lying casually over his own, where it rested curled around her waist.

The stress of his day made sure Vince followed her almost as quickly. Even the thoughts chasing around his head about what it meant he was back in bed with the bane of his existence couldn't keep him awake after the night he'd had worrying about that same person getting herself killed.

The shrill ring of a cell phone woke him up an undetermined amount of time later. He checked the red numbers of the clock beside the bed blearily. _It's already twelve? _he asked himself as he grabbed the ringing phone off the night stand and flipped it open on instinct, wanting to answer it before it woke up the girl still asleep against his chest. "Hello?" he asked gruffly. His voice was obviously rusty from not being used all night.

"Hello?" Dom's puzzled voice came back across the line. "Vince?"

"Yeah," Vince realized he was holding Tempest's Motorola Startac, not his own Nokia. _Ah fuck!_

"I thought I called Tempest. I'm sure I dialled some fucked up long distance number Jesse gave me."

Dom sounded genuinely confused, Vince noted. "You didn't dial the wrong number, I answered the wrong phone. Just a second." He handed the phone over to the now conscious, though not very, Tempest. Dom, he mouthed to her as he handed her the open phone.

She wrinkled her nose at him in irritation. Didn't he know she had no desire to speak to Dominic? "Hello?" she said, instead of going with her instinct, which was telling him to go fuck himself and hanging up.

Dom really didn't know what to say. After he'd spent the night worrying about the arrogant woman, she'd found Vince at some point and spent the night with him. After everything. "Um," he tried to begin.

"Did you need something Dominic?" she asked, her tone haughty.

"Um," Dom tried again. He couldn't get anything out around his confusion over how Vince had come to be answering her phone. "I'm sorry. Why is Vince with you?"

"Why is that your business?" Tempest asked quickly.

"It's just that you left here yesterday and left Jesse and Leon partially in a panic because you were all alone in L.A. but you weren't even alone at all. You were with Vince. How is that fair to do to Jesse?"

"I was alone when I left and I met up with Vince by accident a lot later. I fail to see how you have any right to question me about this after yesterday. Did you not figure out how well it goes over with me when you try to dictate to me?"

Dom growled on his end of the connection. It was clear she was ok. He moved to hang up.

Vince got sick of being left out of the loop, and of seeing Tempest getting so upset. He lowered his head to the crook of her neck and softly bit her under her ear. She shuddered against his chest. Taking that as a good sign he started to nibble down the slope of her shoulder as he slid a hand over her stomach.

She sighed breathily before she remembered she was still on the line with Dom. She moved the phone away from her mouth. "Vince, knock it off," she hissed, glaring up at him. Her glare lacked most of its trademark ire. Vince grinned.

"Or what?" he murmured against her neck before nipping at the part of her earlobe not covered by her small cell phone.

Tempest sighed, but couldn't keep the smile off her face. "Dom I have to go. Tell Jess I'll see him later." She snapped the phone closed decisively. "I should seriously get up out of this bed and leave you here alone for that stunt."

"Just shut your smart mouth and get over here."

For once, she listened.

Dom looked at the dead receiver in his hand in shock. She'd hung up on him. And Vince had been there making out with her while she was talking to him. He shook his head. Some things were too fucked up to even contemplate. He looked up from the top of the kitchen table and found the eyes of Jesse, Leon, and Letty on his face. "She's fine. Apparently met Vince on the town last night and they found some other place to stay together." Dom shook his head and missed the look on Leon's face.

Unfortunately for Letty, she did not. She watched Dom get up and cross to the back door of the house.

"It's still a work day people. Lunch is over. Back to the garage. We got work to do if we're gonna get all those cars home by the end of the day."

Letty got up quickly and caught Leon's wrist before he could leave the table. "What's wrong with you?"

"What'd you mean what's wrong with me? Nothing's wrong with me."

"Really? So why'd you look like someone kicked your puppy after Dom told us that she spent the night with Vince last night?"

Leon sighed heartily. It was none of his business, and it wasn't like they'd made any kind of commitment to each other. It wasn't like he hadn't always been aware she was still in love with his hard headed friend. But that didn't stop him from wishing she wasn't out looking to get her heart broken again. Not after he'd put her back together once, and at some cost to himself. He could love her. Love her the way she deserved to be loved. But she couldn't love him back. She loved a man who wasn't capable of returning her feelings and treating her the way she deserved to be treated. And instead of seeing that about him and protecting herself, even if she couldn't see that and pick the man who would be good for her, no, even if she couldn't do that, it seemed she couldn't even just chose to be alone. She kept on letting the man who had broken her pull her back down into the blackness that would be their world. A world of breaking each other, hurting each other, roaring and screaming and bruising each other only to have wild sex later and consider everything fixed. Couldn't they see it didn't ultimately fix anything? That it only confused things even worse? Letty wouldn't drop it without an answer, and god knew she knew what it was like to be hurt by the one you loved.

"They had a big fight on Sunday night and she was just," he sighed, "shattered. And disillusioned and broken. And…" he trailed off, unable to tell Letty, even though he wanted to. Even though he knew he could. While she certainly would judge him if she felt the need, she would never tell on him. The story would never make the rounds. He and Vince had held her while she sobbed after catching Dom cheating on her one too many times to think she would turn around and reveal a secret of his. He knew she wouldn't. But he still didn't want to tell her what he'd done. He felt too much like he'd taken advantage of Tempest's weak emotional state that night. He felt like he'd used her because he'd wanted her so badly and he didn't feel like painting himself in that unflattering light to Letty.

"And?" Letty prodded.

"And she was going to fight Vince."

"So what?" Letty broke in. "I've fought with Vince. We all have. Vince is always doing some bonehead thing that makes sure people are fighting with him."

"No, not like this. She's schooled and a half decent fighter. But she wasn't going to yell at him and let him yell back. Not this time. She was going to try and kick his ass. She might have done ok. But she had him so mad, and vice versa, that there wouldn't have been an end that didn't have her beaten until she didn't get back up Let."

"Vince would never, ever hit her," Letty growled back vehemently. "No matter what, he would never hit her and I can't believe you would think that of him."

"I know he wouldn't mean to Let, I know that. But you weren't there. You didn't see how hard she was pushing him for just that result. She wanted him to hit her so she could hit him back. She doesn't think of herself as a female." A small, quirky smile lifted the corners of his mouth. "She's even worse than you in that regard in some respects. She doesn't do the girly dressing thing, she doesn't do the girly attitudes and as far as she's concerned she fights like a boy too. She wouldn't hit him first, so he had to start the fight. And she knew all the right buttons to push that it was a very likely possibility."

"Leon, we know each other pretty good around here. But we don't know everything about everyone. You get that right?"

"Yeah, I get that."

"Well, unless she had Vince so upset he didn't know who he was, where he was or who she was, he would never hit her. Ever. Trust me. But besides that, what was the point? Obviously, you saw this fight. So then what?"

"I broke it up. I took her out of the room, took her downstairs." He let his eyes meet Letty's. He let his silence be the rest of his story.

Letty's left brow rose skyward instantly. "You took her downstairs, downstairs?"

He nodded tersely in answer. "I didn't really mean to. But he had her so convinced she wasn't…That she was the problem, not him. And she was just so…" He ran a hand through his hair. "And it was a mistake, though not one either of us regret. But now, after everything and after how close a call it was last time he was with her only to see Mia after the fact and drop her hard enough to crack her inside, now she's given him yet another chance to do it again." He could tell from the look on Letty's face that she saw. She knew that Tempest was in love with Vince, and that he could be half in love with Tempest, if he'd let himself.

"But you say you knew she was still in love with Vince all along, right?"

"Yeah."

"So you really can't be all that upset that she got back with him right? She's in love with him and people in love don't always do what's smart. What's right. You know that. You have to, living around here."

"I do know that. But it doesn't make it any easier to see her doing this to herself all over again. There's no future for her with him."

"Considering she's not from any place even remotely close to here, there's no future for her with anyone here."

"You know what I meant."

It was Letty's turn to sigh. "I know what you meant. But it's not going to help you any more than it'll help her to pretend like reality isn't going to intrude in about four days when she leaves, Leon. She's going to leave. She's going to leave you, and Vince, and all the shit, and a few months after she goes home, she'll be a fond memory for you, and for Vince, and this whole place will be the same for her. What happens on a two week vacation from reality isn't the kind of thing that a life can be built on."

"I just can't help but think that if she wanted one of us badly enough, you'd be wrong."

"Have you seen the way she looks at Vince when he's not watching? If wanting someone badly enough was enough, she'd be making plans to haul her shit over three thousand miles."

"If she wants him so bad, why is she so prepared to go without him?"

"Because a woman, no matter how tough she is, can only put herself out there, hanging and vulnerable, so many times before she just can't do it anymore."

Letty looked up into his eyes, and he saw that for her at least, that statement was nothing but God's honest truth. But to not be willing to make the attempt? For someone like Jesse's cousin to simply say 'it's been great' and let it go at that? For someone like her to not just show up, get in his face and make him see what he was missing until he cracked or told her he had no interest at all? It didn't jive. "I'm not sure I can totally buy that."

"You guys! We have work to do. What's the big deal?" Dom growled from the door.

"Nothing, we were just leaving." Leon moved toward the door after giving Letty a look warning her to let it drop. She followed him out of the house with a shake of her head.


	48. Of Panic and Slamming Doors

I have to start this chapter with an 'oh my god I'm so sorry I left this so long without updating'. Can't promise it won't happen again though. :D This chapter, which I will have edited for content by the time it arrives your hands, my sweets, will still contain adult subject matter. Not the least of which is an ample serving of my potty mouth. A significant serving of my potty brain may also make it past the sensors. Of course, I'm the sensors, so you see how it is. But if adult content bothers you, perhaps you really ought skip the part about half way through… :D (I'm evil and you love it) Enjoy. Oh, and Merry (belated) Christmas and a Happy New Year if I don't update again before January 1st. In the spirit of the season, review. It'll make me happy and merry and bright and shiny. :D

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Forty-Eight – **Of Panic and Slamming Doors**

"Where you goin'?" Vince asked as he watched Tempest get up out of the bed some time later.

"To get in the shower and get dressed."

"Why?"

"We can't lie around here all day. Check out was likely a good few hours ago and I have some things to get done today."

"Like what?"

"Like I told Harry I'd fix some glitches with his new car when it arrives at Dom's and it's coming today."

"Dom, much as I know you find this hard to believe, makes it as a mechanic without you. He can handle fixing the cars that come in without your help."

Tempest turned to look at the smug man in what was essentially her bed, since she'd been the one to want it in the first place. "Really? You think he can fix this car without me?"

"Yeah, sure."

"What do I get when I prove you wrong?"

"Whatever you want, 'cause you aren't going to prove me wrong."

"So do I have to actually get Dom to try to fix the issue, or can I just tell you what it is and trust you to be honest if Dom could really fix it without help or not?"

"You can just tell me. It's not going to matter what it is."

"Fixing electrical glitches that don't seem to involve broken wires or corrosion in the power window motors and pop-up headlights of a nineteen ninety five Lotus Elan."

Vince's face twisted up in distaste. "That doesn't count. You didn't say it wasn't a normal car."

"It is totally normal."

"It's not normal. It's a Lotus. It's European." Vince spit this out as if the words tasted badly.

"So? It's still a normal car."

"No it's not. It's backward."

"No more backward than my Skyline. It's not even as backward as the Skyline because this Lotus was always made with the USA in mind."

"The Skyline is Japanese. Normal people drive Japanese cars. Only weirdos and people with far too much money drive European cars."

"Jesse's car is from Germany, and last time I checked, Germany was part of Europe."

"Sure, but that's different."

"Why is that different?"

"Because the Germans make Porsche."

Tempest laughed despite herself. "Do you even care how hypocritical you sound right now?"

Her question forced a chuckle out of him. "No, not really. So go take your shower. I'll go get your stuff and you can take me to my car once you're dressed. Then I'll meet you at the garage."

Him making plans to be around her for the rest of the day worried her. She turned back to look at him, hanging around the bathroom door and frowning, basically forgetting she was as naked as the day she was born. "V?"

"Yeah?" he questioned, still sitting on the side of the bed.

"You know that what happened last night doesn't really change anything between us, right? I'm still not over what you did before and I sure as hell will never think of myself as dating you ever again. So you do realize that if I want to take Craig Everett home tonight or some other random guy, you got no call to care? Right?" When he looked up to meet her troubled gaze, she could tell that no matter what he had been expecting her to say, it hadn't been that. "I mean, last night was good," she grinned, unable to help herself when she thought of the explosiveness of what had come in the store room, "and so was this morning," she added with an inward smile, "but we're not exclusive today any more than we were yesterday. You get that, right?"

"If you're asking me if I'm ok with you taking some other guy home with you while you're still down here, the answer is no. I'll never be ok with that. If it makes you feel better to tell yourself that now we're really just having sex with no strings, so be it." He stood up and started to stalk her way. "But seriously? I better not ever find out there was another guy."

"Can you even hear yourself?" she asked with a sneer. "You go flippin' ape shit if I so much as tell you that I'd feel free to go after another guy if I was so inclined but you don't expect me to get pissed off at all when you throw Mia in my face. It's a two way fuckin' street Vince. If you get to fuck me while trying to get other girls than I get the same consideration. Either deal with it or go fuck _yourself_." With that she slammed the bathroom door in his face and locked it with a distinct click as the tumblers flipped over.

She leaned against the door, trying to get her anger in check. She heard him grumble about troublesome females that should stop running away from their arguments before he was finished talking and then she heard the door of the room open and close. She assumed he was going for a walk to clear his head and to grab her bags as he said he would. She started the shower and when it was the right temperature, she stepped under the spray and turned her face into the hot water. She had no idea how long she stood there, her face uptilted into the jets of water. Once she had her anger under better control she started to wash her hair and body. She finished up quickly and got out of the shower. She wrapped her hair in one towel and twisted another one around her before leaving the bathroom. If Vince hadn't come back with her things she had no clothes and no hairbrush and she was going to have to put her things from yesterday back on and go get her own bags.

She walked out of the bathroom and didn't see Vince anywhere, but her bags were sitting on the floor beside the bed. She started toward them, only to halt with a startled gasp when she was grabbed from behind. A quick glance over her shoulder showed Vince standing behind her. "Why are you accosting me as I leave the bathroom?"

"Because if you get a chance to get back into the bathroom you'll take off on me and lock yourself in there again," he muttered against the side of her neck.

"I'm going to take off on you anyway because I have to fix the Elan and I have to check in with Jesse. He'll be worried enough as it is. I can't hang out here all day."

"Don't be all pissy with me."

"You're right. I am pissy with you and you're not going to change my mind about it."

"Oh really?"

Much as she hated the tone of his question, she wasn't going to give in and change her mind. "Yeah, _really_."

The rough stubble along his jawbone rubbed against the bare skin of her shoulder. "There's nothing I could do to change your mind?" When his cheek reached the curve where her shoulder stopped and her arm began, he started back toward her neck, using his lips instead of his cheek to brush her skin.

"No, there's nothing."

"Nothing at all?"

The lips moved from her shoulder to the side of her neck and she choked back an audible sign of just how much he was affecting her. She kept the angry look on her face with some effort and shrugged. "No, nothing."

One careless flick of his finger undid the tuck protecting her modesty by keeping the white cotton cocoon she'd donned in the bathroom secured around her breasts. It fell unchecked to the floor. He didn't want to stop it's fall, and she wouldn't give him the satisfaction—he was sure—of making a mad grab for the edges before they parted. Due to his greater height, once the towel pooled white around her feet, everything he had an interest to see was bare to his gaze. She stood haughty in his arms, looking bored. He was sure it was an act, and it amused him on some level. Everyone had their coping measures and it seemed hers was to pretend she didn't want what they both knew was coming.

He trailed the back of his hand down her side, over her hip and across the top of her thigh before pressing the flat of his hand to her stomach. Her skin always felt like warmed silk under his rough and callused palms and fingers. "You sure there's absolutely nothing I can say or do to convince you to give me half an hour to make it worth your while to stick around?"

"No, I have to get back to Jess before he flips out about where I am." His hand wandered upwards and she didn't react fast enough to stifle the hitch in her breathing.

"I'm pretty sure he knows where you are, if not what you're doing." He was glad his position hid the smug smile on his face from her. He knew he had her lulled into a state where her reactions were tempered with hot desire. If she had one reason to get truly mad at him again, she'd turn into a hissing, spitting wildcat. Not that he didn't get off on that sometimes, but he wasn't really in the mood to have her attempt to take his face off with her 'claws'. He started to nip at the side of her neck as his fingers found the hard tip of one of her breasts and started to tease. His attention moved from side to side as he continued to suck on her neck and ear gently. He knew that victory was within his grasp when she finally gave up on the unmoved, aloof act and melted back into him, the back of her head finding the pad of muscle on his chest that cradled it as though one had been made for the other. "Still want to go to the garage right this second?" She shook her head no, her eyes still closed. "You sure?" Another simple nod, yes this time.

It was good enough for him. Locking one arm around her waist he picked her up off her feet and carried her over beside the bed before flipping her around and tossing her back in one quick motion. She barely had time to register she was now lying prone before he was lowering himself over her, lips finding hers as hands sought purchase on skin still damp from the hot water of her shower.

Wills and desires clashed as each raced toward their mutual destination. A bite here, a scratch there. A few bruises, a burst blood vessel or two. Soon two bottom lips were equally swollen and red, each having been bitten harder than necessary more than once. One had two fistfuls of hair in her grasp, where the other only had one large hand tangled in her damp, disordered curls. And when her breathing hitched and her back arched he watched her eyes go unfocused as she whimpered his name brokenly. The way her nails found purchase in the flesh of his back, and the way her flushed skin felt arched into his chest and stomach rang the death knell of his control. Taking the curve of skin where her shoulder joined her neck between his teeth, he followed her with a growl.

He held his weight on his forearms and looked down at her in the moment after he got his breath back. She seemed to have fallen into a light sleep, but she often did, so he wasn't surprised. He brushed some hair back from her face and studied the fans her eyelashes made against her cheekbones. For some reason, he couldn't help but feel the main reason why he couldn't seem to get enough of her was the only time she allowed him to really see her was during and immediately after sex. Every other minute they were around each other, she had some sort of guard up to hide her real feelings from him. He was aware of it, but since he was pretty much the same way, he just didn't know what to do about it. It bothered him that it was almost like she didn't trust what he would do with the real her, if he saw her real feelings. But he wasn't willing to allow her to see all of his either, and he didn't want to be a hypocrite. She'd accused him of that very thing enough.

Scared of crushing her, he reversed their positions and watched as she kept right on sleeping. He could tell she wasn't too far under because her breathing wasn't deep or even enough for her to be truly asleep. And that was about when he got just a little frightened by the fact he knew how she slept well enough to judge her levels of asleep. He wavered between thinking he should wake her so they could get ready and leave and letting her sleep until she woke up on her own. She hated to be woken up, but she had seemed like she was in a pretty big hurry to get back to the garage. Ultimately he knew he was damned either way. If he woke her, she'd be upset he'd done so. If he didn't, she'd be upset he'd allowed her to waste time sleeping. She was the most perverse female he'd ever met. Before he had to pick with pathway to hell he wanted to walk down, her eyes fluttered open.

"Did I fall asleep?" she murmured, still sounding more than half asleep as she spoke.

"Yeah," he answered, his tone deep and low.

"For how long?"

"Fifteen, twenty minutes now."

She groaned softly. "We should get out of here."

"Don't sound so enthusiastic about it," Vince said, teasing gently.

"I'm not. I'm all warm and sleepy now." There was no place more comfortable to her than draped across his body. Sometimes she wondered how she'd ever been comfortable before she'd had him to be her resting place. Then she wondered how she would go back to those times again, when she left him. A sobering thought.

"So let's stay here and be warm and sleepy for awhile longer. What difference does it really make? It's not like Harry will be in some huge rush to get a Lotus Elan on the road. He's got lots of other cars to make due with until this one is fixed."

"Ok."

"What?" he asked in shock.

"I said ok. As in ok, let's just stay here and be warm and sleepy a bit longer." Once it had occurred to her what else was waiting for her at Dom's garage, namely recriminations from Leon for where and how she'd spent the night, her urgency to get there had vanished. She burrowed closer to the warm male under her and sighed as she relaxed into his body heat again. Things felt so right in the here and now. Things would be made to feel so wrong, and she would be made to feel so stupid in the near future. Why not put that off a while longer if she could? Why not enjoy feeling right while it was possible?

Without conscious thought, Vince found one of his hands rubbing circles on her back as she curled into him and drifted in the same slightly unconscious place she'd been in before. He knew there would be some reason behind her willingness to change her mind about rushing back to the garage but he didn't think he wanted to know what it was. He was just going to take the time he now had to spend with her where he was in a lot less danger of saying or doing something to hurt or anger her and be happy for the time.

That was about when the fact he was happy to simply lie somewhere holding her crashed into him and he felt like hyperventilating. _Excuse me? You want to just be _close_ to her? Is there something _wrong_ with you_? He couldn't jump up and run scared right that second. She'd know something was up, and she was his ride to Bryce and his own car. He gave her another few minutes, forcing himself to remain relaxed and outwardly calm. "T?"

"Wha?" she sighed.

"We should probably go soon. I have to get my car back from Bryce and you were the one who said you had stuff to do this afternoon."

Wondering what had brought about his change of attitude, she sat up off his chest and looked at him with one eyebrow cocked in question. "What's the sudden hurry?"

"I wasn't the one in a hurry ten minutes ago."

His tone had gotten remarkably surly in a remarkably short period of time. What was with him? "No, but you were the one who said it wasn't like Harry was in a huge rush to get his car back and therefore I didn't have to be in a huge rush to give it to him. What's up with you all of a sudden?"

"I just wanna get outta here. Is that a problem?" Vince growled.

"No, why would it be?" she answered with a shrug, before sliding off the bed and unzipping her bag. She looked up with storm clouds swirling in her eyes. "Well, get your shit together if you're in such a fuckin' hurry."

Vince sighed and ran a hand through his hair as he watched her go back to pawing through her stuff. Again, he'd said the wrong thing and messed his point up all to shit. He cleared his throat in preparation for saying something to try and break the tension, but she shot him a glacier cold look that told him he pretty much might as well just save his breath anyway. She wasn't going to listen to him. She was far too pissed off. He watched as she stalked naked to the bathroom with a bundle of her stuff under her arm and slammed the door shut so hard the wall vibrated. He shook his head and mentally kicked his own ass. He was certainly in for one hell of an afternoon now.

When she still hadn't immerged fifteen minutes later yet hadn't turned the water on or made any other noise to give away why she was taking so long, he moved over to the door and stood with his ear pressed against it. With a curse he bit back with some effort he squeezed his eyes closed. She was crying in the bathroom. So now what? He tried the doorknob. She had been aware enough to lock the door. He sighed and tried to mentally prepare himself for what came next. He knocked on the door. "You ok in there? You've been locked in there fifteen minutes now."

"Go away."

"I can't. You're the one with the ride, remember?"

"I don't care. Walk where ever for all I care. Just go away!"

He sighed again, more violently. "There are two choices here, the way I see it. You can either come out here and we can go or I can break the door down to find out what's wrong with you. What's it gonna be?"

"Option three where you go fuck yourself someplace else," she roared back.

Her tone was still decidedly watery. "Come on T. Open the damn door."

"No."

"I'm sorry for being an asshole. Open the door."


	49. Of Stupidity and Free Falling

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Forty-Nine – **Of Stupidity and Free Falling**

Tempest looked at the door from where she sat on the edge of the tub. There was no way she was opening the door so he could see her all red ringed and blotchy. Crying because his actions had had the power to hurt her, after everything else. She'd thought herself prepared. When she'd allowed what had happened in the storeroom to happen she had thought herself ready to deal with the aftermath. She had convinced herself that this time she would go in with eyes wide open and he wouldn't have the power to hurt her. How wrong she had been. _Thanks for the fuck now let's get out of here_, she mouthed out loud to herself in a sarcastic, unflattering way. _You know you're only good for one thing Temp_, she continued. _Now that I got what I wanted, it's time to get out of here before you expect more than I'm willing to give_. Another hot tear rolled down her red cheek. Nope, not ready to open the door and make nice by a long shot. "I don't care how sorry you are. Go away."

"I'm not going anywhere. This is getting stupid. Open the damn door."

"No." She _felt_ stupid, constantly yelling no at the closed door. But the other option, the one where she opened it, was worse. The one where he knew beyond a doubt that she'd been crying over what he'd done to her was a million times worse. Hope sprung eternal that since he'd already had what he wanted from her, he'd decide that breaking down the door was too much effort to expend and just leave as she'd asked him to. Surely Bryce would be willing to come pick him up in the Maxima.

"Fine. I'll break it down. Have it your way."

"Just leave me alone and leave the fucking door alone too." She sighed. He wasn't going to go away. And he likely would break the door down too. He was such a stubborn bastard. She glared at the door evilly. "I hope you hurt yourself getting in here, you fuckin' prick."

Before jamming his shoulder into the door and hoping to break the jam, Vince happened to look at the knob. He realized that it was of the variety where a wire of some fashion could be used to push the safety and thus unlock the door, all without any sort of wood being broken. He retrieved a coat hanger from the closet and sprung the lock, pushing the door open before she could get up to relock the set. "Ok, this has gone on long enough. What is your problem?" He wished he hadn't said anything at all, let alone something so mean, once he saw her. She was sitting balanced on the edge of the tub, her heels hooked on the ledge so that her chin could rest on her knees. He was sure if she hadn't had her arms locked around her legs that she would have fallen off her perch, unable to keep her balance. Once he made his way into the room she buried her face against her legs to better hide from him.

"Go away," she groaned. It came out garbled against the cotton which was now covering her thighs.

He cocked a hip against the vanity and leaned there looking at her. "I know I was short with you, but was I really this mean?" He sighed. "I mean, I've been short with you before. Aren't you getting use to it?"

"Yes. Now will you leave me alone? Fuck, take the god damn Skyline yourself and _I'll_ walk." Anything to make him go away and leave to her feel stupid and miserable alone.

"What exactly did I do to piss you off so bad this time?"

It was the final breaking point for her nerves. "What did you do?" she forced herself to meet his eyes. "What didn't you do? One second everything's great. But in the next one it's like it dawns on you. She said she didn't want this, she said she wanted to leave, but I talked her into it and got what I wanted out of her, so now it's time to go before she goes getting ideas. What did you do?" she muttered to herself incredulously.

He sighed. "It wasn't like that. I just realized how late it's getting. I don't have my car back yet, Dom's gonna be pissed I blew him off again from the garage and I'll have to deal with that, not to mention how pissed Leon and Jesse are gonna be with me. So I just wanted to get it all over with. It had nothing to do with being ready to get rid of you because we'd finished," he trailed off. He figured she knew what they'd finished as well as he did. "I mean, I stayed here with you last night even though technically we'd already done it in the club. If all I was after was sex, wouldn't I have just left you here alone last night and went home? Why would I stay?"

"You weren't going to. Remember? I asked if you were coming to bed and you asked if I was sure I wanted you to. You were looking for an out last night and like an idiot, I didn't give you one."

"I thought you'd want me to leave for taking advantage of you in the club after everything else, ok? It had nothing to do with not wanting to stay here with you. I wanted to stay here and know you were safe." His anger made him say things he normally wouldn't have. "I wanted to take you home to my bed so I'd know you were safe. So I'd know you weren't doing something else stupid to potentially risk your life and your neck. But you took that option away. So no, I wasn't looking to leave you here alone. I was looking to be close to you. But I didn't want to force you to have me around because you don't even like me anymore. Listen, I know it's possible to want sex with someone and not like that someone ok? And I know that's how you feel about me. So I didn't want you to have to keep me around when I figured you wouldn't want to. But when you said you didn't mind I wasn't put out, I was glad."

Even hearing he'd truly wanted to stay wasn't enough to make her sure about what he really wanted from her. "You sure were in a rush to leave after you got what you wanted this morning."

_Fucking perceptive woman. _"I really was just in a rush to get the awkwardness of the rest of the day out of the way. The longer we stay here the longer they think we're still out somewhere doing," he cleared his throat, "things. And the angrier they're going to get." When she looked up to meet his eyes again he knew he hadn't fooled her. He stood up straight, walked over in front of her and grabbed her upper arms gently, picking her up onto her feet. She sputtered, trying to get words for her anger to form. Before she could manage, he pressed his lips to hers. He hated her tears. He wanted to give her anything that would make her stop crying. And he hated that desire just as much. Because he had himself convinced that guys who cared were guys who were whipped by the females they were with, and he'd long ago sworn to never be that guy. But yet here he was, kissing her gently anyway. He felt her try to resist him. She did ok for about thirty seconds, give or take, before she gave in and kissed him back. This time, there was no desire to smile smugly. Just happiness she was done crying.

"What I really want is to take you back into the other room, lay you on the bed, and spend all day and most of the night there with you. But I really don't think either of us want to listen to the shit we'd have to listen to if we did that. If we didn't show up all day and missed races tonight. So get dressed and we'll go get my car. And after races tonight, I'll show you just how not ready I am to be separated from you yet. In my own bed though. Ok?" he murmured softly against her temple.

She literally hated the way he could make her capitulate to his way so easily. It wasn't fair for him to be able to make her forget she was trying to hate him with so little effort. Yet, instead of fighting with him further, or at least telling him there was no way she wanted shit all else to do with him, least of all to spend another night with him, she found herself nodding against his chest tiredly. Try though she might, she couldn't give him up. Not even when the universe laughed at her. Pointed out someone so much better for her that she could have totally for herself. But he wasn't enough. Only Vince was enough, and she couldn't have him. Not unless she was willing to share him. And it was shattering her just a little more inside again. And god help her, she figured she might just like it that way. God knew she couldn't walk away. Not even to save her soul. And she figured it might come down to that. To her losing her soul over him. One last tear rolled down her cheek. Why couldn't he just love her back?

With a startled gasp, she realized what she had just admitted to herself. She was in love with him. Not could be someday or maybe a little or 'kinda sorta'. In love. With Vince. And he couldn't or wouldn't love her back. She finally found it in herself to fight to get out of his arms. "Ok, we gotta go." _Oh boy do we ever_. She rushed the door. She had to run. She had to get away. It wasn't possible. How had she let herself actually fall in love with him? Not just muse it could happen, or think about what would happen if it did happen, but actually let it happen? She started to zip up her bags.

"Where's the fire?" Vince asked from a position leaning in the doorway of the bathroom, watching her scramble frantically.

"Not twenty minute ago you were in a frantic rush to get out of here. Now I wanna get outta here and you don't wanna go. What's the problem?" She didn't let him answer. "Are you ready yet?"

He shook his head. Something was up with her. First not wanting to go back to the garage, and now not wanting to stay alone with him. "Yeah, let's go." He knew he wasn't getting an answer out of her. Not while her eyes still had that wild look to them. That look like a wolf caught in a steel leg trap. Frantic to get away to the point where it'd rip its own leg to shreds to do it. That, or gnaw it off and leave it behind. So what had happened to make her see staying with him in the same light as a wolf would see being caught against its will? Rather than worry any more about it just then, he grabbed her bags before she could and shouldered them. She gave him a glare, but followed him to the car without a word. She got into the driver's seat before he could and proceeded to fix her seat to suit her.

"Where's Bryce live?"

Jealousy grabbed him so quickly he never saw it coming. "Why do you need to know where Bryce lives?"

"Because he has your car and a very short time ago you were in a huge rush to get it back."

He'd forgotten about his car. "He lives a few streets away from the bar."

She put the car in reverse and left her parking spot. Once the car was underway she turned the stereo on and cranked the volume. It made conversation impossible, which he figured was her intent in the first place. He thought about reaching over to turn it down a few times, but ended up sitting still each time. What was the point? Anything he could say would just be a platitude. She knew why he wanted to leave, even if he'd tried to hide it from her, and on some levels he figured he knew why she'd been in such a rush herself. Things between them were simply good at being bad. When she got to the bar, he started to tell her where to turn from there until they pulled up to a house with both his Maxima and a midnight blue Harley Davidson in the driveway.

"This is it," he said. He knew it was obvious, but he had to say something. She didn't answer him, only nodded affirmative to his statement. "So, I'll see you later? Either at the shop or at home before races?"

"Sure. I guess so. Yeah, sometime," she babbled back. Her thoughts were still all chasing each other around at what felt like a million miles an hour in her head.

"Temp, you ok?" he asked, the door to the car half open but currently forgotten as his hand rested on the handle.

"Fine. Why wouldn't I be fine?"

"I don't know. But you're not acting fine. You're acting really strange."

"I'm fine. Really. Listen, I'll see you later, right? And for right now I wanna find Jess before he sends a search party and freaks about where I am."

"Ok, I'll catch up with you at the garage in a few then."

"Yeah, sure."

With one last look at her, he closed his door and walked up the cement walkway leading to Bryce's front door, still shaking his head. What had he said to drive her buck fucking insane? Not like he'd ever know, because she'd never tell him in a million years. But he couldn't figure it out. When he thought back to the second before she'd gone off the deep end, he couldn't see what he'd said or done to set her off. He'd told her that he would spend the night showing her he wasn't just looking for a quick roll in the sack with her and she'd flipped out. He couldn't win. Wasn't that what she wanted to hear? He shook his head. He'd never figure her out. Not in a million years of trying. He did what he thought she wanted and it was wrong. He did what he thought was wrong and it _was _wrong. He just could not win. He knew he'd have to try and get the real reason she'd flipped out out of her later, but he doubted she'd crack.

Tempest pulled away from the curb at Bryce's and fought the need to rip off down the road at light speed. She had to get away. How had she allowed herself to be so stupid? How had she allowed herself to fall in love with him? She had always known from the start that he wasn't hers. That when she set him free he would not come back. Yet somehow she had allowed herself to fall in love with him. Because she was clearly stupid, and delusional. She told herself for the millionth time that if she was waiting for him to break down and ask her to stick around, she'd be waiting into perpetuity. He was never going to.

He was still convinced he was in love with Mia. And she wasn't able to just up and do it without his say so. What if he got mad at her for daring? She'd never recover. Better to just go away in a few days and try to start forgetting him. Move on with her real life. He didn't want to be part of it and she knew it. But she still felt like a total moron, whether he was aware of what she'd done or not. She pulled up to the garage a short time later and parked the car. She took a deep breath to brace herself before she exited her vehicle and locked the doors. She wasn't looking forward to what Leon would have to say to her at all. And moreover, he was entitled to be pissed off, so she couldn't even be uppity with him.

She pushed the shop door open with a sigh. The Lotus was sitting off to the side of the shop. The driver's side door was open and the skin was pulled off the inside. Leon sat on the concrete floor beside the open door, a look of frustration on his face. She walked right over to the Elan without stopping or looking at anything else, crawled over Leon to get into the driver's seat, and settled there, her knees drawn up to her chest as she faced the open door and the man on the floor beside it. She looked neither right nor left, but instead straight ahead at the concrete wall of the shop. It didn't stop her from feeling the eyes of Dominic burn into her face. He was still livid with her. She wondered what he would do about it this time at the same time as she figured she was too tired and broken to care just now. "You'll never find the problem like that."

"What makes you say that?" Leon asked. His tone was short and he didn't look at her.

"Because the issue isn't in the motor."

"Really?"

"Yeah, it's in the wiring, but not the connectors."

"There's no broken wires. I checked."

"They're not obviously broken. But they are broken."

"How can they be broken but not obviously?" he asked in exasperation.

"Oh trust me, they can be. The plastic around them is a tough shell. It hides the damage inside nicely. Just not well enough to make the windows work in spite of it."

Leon finally looked up at her. The look on her face proved her point. She too was broken, though not obviously. To most she would just look tired. "So, where are they broken?"

"Inside." She shook her head and turned her gaze to her lap instead of the wall before elaborating. "Under the plastic up by the duct where it runs through the doorjamb into the engine compartment."

"You sure about that?"

"Sure enough that I bet you a thousand bucks that if you replace the wires from the motor to the fuse panel the window will work."

Leon nodded and started to strip the wires bare. He was looking for the break, curious if she was right. He hadn't been treated to Jesse's story of her telling Harry she could fix the issue in her sleep. It also gave him some thing to do with his hands to keep him calm for his next question. "Why?"

She ignored the fact that she knew very well what he was getting at. "Because water got inside the coating at some point and corroded the wires. The hole in the plastic that let the water in is just so small that you can't tell where it is now."

"That isn't what I meant, and you know it," he growled. "After everything else, why'd you go and give him another chance to do this to you T? You had to know it was coming."

"Yeah, I guess I did." With a sigh, she leaned to the side, into the seat back, still hugging her legs to her chest. "I was also drunk when he found me and he was fuckin' furious and it's never a good combination for us. I did something for Harry last night. Something illegal and potentially dangerous. And the person on the other side of that thing happened to be Vince, Leon. A fact I didn't find out until after I was there, and he was there, and by then it was too late to go back. And once he saw me doing what I was doing he wanted to wring my neck. So I tried to get away and I hid in the last place I thought he'd ever find me, but he still found me. And once he did, and we fought, there really wasn't any way to get out of it. Not for either of us."

"You really believe that, don't you?" Leon's strident tone conveyed the fact that he did not buy it for a second.

"Yeah. Why? You don't believe that things could be that volatile between us?"

"I just find it hard to believe anyone as strong and self reliant as you can't say no to sex with a guy if they don't really want it."

"Well, knowing something is very bad for me, and really not wanting it are two very different things. I mean, a smoker knows that cigarettes aren't good for him. But he still wants the next one. Knowing it's not good for him doesn't mean he just doesn't want it. Maybe he wants in it spite of how bad it is for him. He tried to give me an out, he tried to make me put an end to it last night, but I couldn't. I tried but I couldn't say no."

"So you're trying to tell me you're addicted to him?"

"In a manner of speaking I guess I am. Neither of us intended for anything to go farther than teaching the other a lesson but things just didn't work out that way. What can I say? You can't be any madder at me than I am at myself right now."

"I'm not mad at you gorgeous. Just upset that you're setting yourself up to fall again."

"Too late. Fell hard already once today. And the day is young. Why can't I just be as smart as you seem to think I am?"

"Aw shit," Leon said as he looked into her face. Her chin was resting on top of her bent knees and her eyes were closed, lashes creating crescent shaped shadows like bruises on her pale cheeks. "You've realized it, haven't you?"

"Realized what?"

"That you've fallen for him already." It was all the answer he needed when she leaned into the seatback and rested her head against it with a sigh. _Ah shit_.


	50. Of Dissed and Being Dismissed

**AN: **Sorry for the wait, again. I just can't get motivated to write lately. I have someone I blame, but I won't call the guilty party out by name to save them the ensuing barrage of hate mail :D. I still hope to finish this story and the sequel, which I already started. As for all the others, with the exception of Catalyst, I don't know if they'll ever be finished. I'm humbly sorry for that, but I just don't know if I can take them anywhere they should go from the position I find myself in now. Anyway, think happy thoughts about the Storm Girl making time to write, and I'll think happy thoughts about me finding that time. :) Reviews make me smile, hint hint.

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By **– **_TempestRaces_

Chapter Fifty–** Of Dissed and Being Dismissed**

Vince didn't bother knocking on the door in front of him. He just shoved it open and walked into the house, closing the door behind him. He was expected. He'd been expected earlier, no doubt, but he was here now. "B, you home?" he called into the hallway, picking his keys up off the hall table as he did so. He watched as Bryce walked out of the kitchen and into the hall.

"Yeah, I'm here."

"What's your problem?" Vince asked. He knew already, though he wished to god he didn't. He was about to get a tuning for something he already had praying on his mind. Why did all the people in his life have to see an issue with sides to take in this situation? That, and take her side all the time.

"Oh I dunno." Bryce shrugged negligently. "Maybe you told me you were gonna leave well enough alone?"

Vince sighed. "I was. It was just," he shook his head. "It was just me'n her. You don't understand."

"What's to understand? She's a nice girl, not the kind you normally go after. And she likes you. And not in the way that girls normally like you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that she doesn't like you for the status you could give her, and she doesn't like you because presumably you're somehow not terrible in bed, selfish prick that you are. She likes you for you, god help her. But you can't give her what she needs to be happy. I think because you'd rather be miserable yourself and if you let her really in you might just _be_ happy, for once. So you keep on using her then pushing her away. And moreover you know exactly what you're doing. To her and to yourself. But you keep on doing it anyway. And because it's her, and I like her, I don't like watching you do it."

"If you like her so much, get in line behind Leon and marry her already," Vince growled.

"I would," Bryce answered, pacing Vince's way. "If she wasn't so hung up on some asshole I know."

"Like I don't hear this shit enough at home. I gotta come here and hear it too?"

"Maybe someday it'll sink in," Bryce answered. "You have places to be." He pointed at the door.

Vince refused to acknowledge he was being kicked out. He decided that agreement was a better option. "Yeah, I got races tonight. You comin' down Friday night?"

"Don't I always?"

"Yeah, but you ain't been this cheesed off with me in a long time," Vince answered, smiling sheepishly. He knew he had it coming but that didn't mean he had to like it.

"Well, I guess we can't hold your idiocy against you. After all, you're just an idiot."

"Ha ha ha. I'll see you Friday night then, if not tomorrow."

"Yeah, get the hell outta here."

Vince left without another word. He didn't have a wise-ass answer to quip back for once. After all, he knew he had every second of recrimination coming to him. But that still didn't make a bitter pill to swallow go down any easier. Knowing he faced more of the same from Leon made him groan out loud. And what about the girl in question? Was she any more normal now than when she had let him out of the car? He turned the Maxima toward DT Performance Automotive, resting his head onto the palm of his left hand, the elbow of his left arm propped on the sill of the open window. He was making a huge, glaring mess of things this time, but fuck if he knew what to do about it.

His gut reaction was fear, so his gut instinct was to run as far from her as he could as fast as he could. He was plain terrified that he was getting way too attached to her, and he was plain terrified of what that meant for him. And what the meant for the plan he had for his life. Because she didn't fit into that plan. Not on any level.

And then there was this nagging part of him that was actually begging him to take his chances and ask her to stick around longer. Maybe even in a permanent sense. And that part terrified him too. But it almost terrified him into running toward her as fast as he could. What if she was as wonderful as Leon and Bryce and Jesse seemed to think? And if she was, what if she was the best thing that would ever happen to him and he ran screaming the other way? Did the universe give out second chances on something like finding the person you were supposed to spend the rest of your life with?

But Dom had been his best friend as long as he could remember, and Dom hated her. Letty wasn't too thrilled with her either. But Letty was mostly indifferent and it was only because she was suspicious just why Dom hated Tempest so much. Once it became clear they hated each other because they just did, Letty would likely warm up to her just fine. Mia and Tempest weren't speaking, but of course he knew exactly why and knew he was also largely to blame. Not that he intended to take credit for that one. Not on his life he didn't.

He parked his car around the back of the garage. He noted, not without irony, that he had parked right beside her car. He got out of his car without enthusiasm and walked in the door. He found everyone busily doing their own thing but for Leon, who was working with Tempest on a red convertible in the corner of the room. Or rather, Leon was working and Tempest was sat watching him while he did so. She was perhaps supervising, but she wasn't doing much in the line of actual work. And she looked sad. Leon looked angry. He almost turned around and left.

But before he could disappear himself right out of the picture, Dominic spotted him. "Where the fuck were you this morning? You're supposed to show up at nine. Not three pm."

"I was busy," Vince grumbled back. He was uncomfortable with having so much attention drawn to his presence. He watched as Letty's narrowed gaze landed on him, and watched as Leon went out of his way not to look despite clearly wanting to.

"Really?" Dom asked. "And let's consider that I don't call finishing up last night's drunken booty call a good reason to blow off work because you're busy."

Vince noted that Dom's statement sure had gotten Leon's attention in the second before he saw so red nothing registered but his determination to beat Dom's face in. Dom was still pissed off about the scene with Tempest in the dining room the night before and the phone conversation at lunch time so he was doing his best to humiliate and hurt her. Reminding her and everyone else that she wasn't supposed to be anything to any of them but Jesse. Least of all to Vince. "I'm sorry. I know I couldn't have heard you right. What did you say?"

"Did I stutter? I know I was speaking English. I said, finishing up the booty call that seemed like a good idea last night while loaded does not give you permission to blow off your job and your family the next day."

Leon looked from Dom's angry face, to Vince's livid face, to the very pale, shocked face of the girl still sitting in the car beside him. He really didn't know where Dom got off talking about Tempest like she wasn't there and didn't have real feelings. And moreover, he didn't know what Vince was going to do about it now. Vince was clearly incensed. Not that Leon could fault him for it. He was pretty ticked off himself. He stood up and headed their way after a sympathetic glance at Tempest. He wanted to be ready to jump into the fray and prevent life threatening injuries. The two were still facing each other down when he reached their side.

"Dominic, that was totally uncalled for Dawg."

"Stay out of it. It's none of your concern."

"Dude, she's sitting right beside me. And Jesse, who considers her a sister, is right over there," Leon growled, pointing over to where Jesse was so immersed in an engine he was still oblivious to the whole drama. "Did you miss that or what? What would you do if someone said something like that to you about Letty? Let alone right in front of her?"

"I'm dating Letty. He's just fucking Tempest. And unless you are too, you better butt out."

Vince noted Leon's shocked, stricken look. He didn't want to take time to delve into it right now, but he was sure that look said something for the state of the sexual relationship between Tempest and Leon. "No, you better say you're sorry. That you're having a real bad day and you spoke without thinking on what was going to leave your mouth. Otherwise, I'll make you say sorry and you won't like it half as much, I promise you that."

"I'm not apologizing because the truth hurts."

"Ok, if you're that ok with how the truth hurts, see how this truth feels." Before Dom could figure what was about to go down, Vince threw a fist straight into his jaw. He was satisfied with the size of the 'twack' generated when his first two knuckles connected with the side of Dom's face. "I punch harder than you! How's that for truths that hurt?"

"Cocksucker!" Dom came at Vince in anger, attempting to punch him back. He aimed for Vince's eye and let go with a right hook.

Vince dodged the blow and stepped in to Dom's space, nailing him with an uppercut to the gut.

The impact forced the air out of Dom's lungs. He came at Vince with a snarl as soon as he had his bearings back.

"Guys, this is stupid!" Leon broke in, attempting to get the fight stopped before either could hurt the other badly. Dom landed a solid blow to Vince's ribs despite Leon's attempts to make them stop.

In the ensuing melee, Leon could only figure they hadn't seen her coming because they simply weren't expecting her. So when Tempest jumped into the middle of the fight and kicked Dom square in the junk, everything happened after the fact as if in slow motion. He watched as Dom fell to his knees with a shocked look on his face, groaning once his knees found solid purchase and his hands found his abused area, Vince turned to gap at Tempest like he was in a parallel dimension, and Letty rushed to Dom's side. Jesse finally looked up Dom's deep groan, a look of total shock on his face to see his cousin standing over a kneeling Dom Toretto. How she had humbled him wasn't hard to figure. Not with him opening and closing his mouth in pain while cupping his testes.

"How about another truth that hurts? I'm not the kind of girl to sit around and listen to you talk trash about me while I'm in the room and can hear everything you say. There, I helped you find your balls, since it seemed like you had misplaced them before. Only willing to talk about a little girl when you thought she'd just sit there and take it? Must make you feel like a real big man, huh? See how big you feel while your nuts are being retrieved from your abdominal cavity, caveman."

Vince watched Dom turn slowly more and more red. First her actions with her foot and then her words were winding him up fit to go right over the edge. Vince found he was both highly amused that she'd kicked Dom in the crotch, and slightly peeved that he hadn't gotten to finish beating him into the ground. Beating on him more now seemed cruel and unnecessary. Tempest had finished it nicely and anything more would just be overkill. It sort of finished things on the right note. And it wasn't like a guy could kick another guy in the balls. They just didn't do that to each other.

"Temp, let's go for a walk." Jesse finally broke into the situation, thinking it would be best to take his cousin out of the immediate area before Dom got his pain under enough control to pick himself up off the ground and go after her himself. What he hadn't counted on was Letty.

"No chick is gonna kick my man in the balls and just get away with it." Letty started to follow the pair across the shop. Maybe Dom had the fight with Vince coming, but she wasn't going to let Tempest get away with putting Dom on his knees. Not for anything. At least, not while she was around. She didn't manage to catch up with them before they'd managed to make it out of the shop. "I said hold up!" she called after them.

"Jesus Lett, hasn't this been bad enough? Do you have to start too?" Jesse snapped.

Letty was so taken aback she didn't know just what to say at first. Jesse had just snapped at her. "She kicked Dom in the nuts, Jesse!"

"He must have done something to deserve it." Jesse took in the tired, weary look on his cousin's face. "She wouldn't have just done it. He must have had it coming. What'd he say to her?"

"It doesn't matter," Tempest broke in, scowling fiercely at Letty with her arms crossed over her chest as she assured Jesse that Dom's words hadn't bothered her. They hadn't. Not really. It was more the truth they pointed out that got to her. So, she was still very angry with Dom. While she had nothing against Letty and never had, the other girl was stood right in front of her and claiming to want to defend the pig she dated, and Tempest was spoiling for a fight. Since everyone kept getting between her and the fights she really wanted to have, she'd take what she could get. "You don't scare me and if getting yourself beat up over that ignorant prick you date will make you feel better about it, so be it. I'll oblige you."

"You're either seriously pissed off or seriously stupid to make that threat." Letty sneered. She honestly liked Tempest. But there was a part of her that was very loyal and that part was telling her it was her duty to avenge Dom's honour, since technically Tempest was a female and Dom couldn't do it himself.

"No, not either. Just fed the fuck up. And totally less than scared of you. I've kicked the ass of guys the size of Dom before. Do you honestly think that you're going to be a huge challenge to me?"

Before Letty could answer to the question, much to the surprise of everyone, Vince had Tempest by the upper arm and was escorting her forcefully over toward their parked vehicles, leaving Jesse and Letty to gap after them. "Once wasn't enough? You were going to try and get him to kick your ass again?"

"No," she retorted, shrugging slightly and pulling a face. "I was trying to shut his big fat mouth. Mission accomplished. Besides, he didn't even really care that you didn't show up. It's not even busy in there right now. He cared that you didn't show up because you were with me. And he wasn't really taking anything out on you. He was taking it out on me in a roundabout way and I didn't appreciate it."

"I was taking care of it."

"Yeah, you were. But I'm not use to letting someone else fight my battles for me. I didn't want someone to make him say he was sorry like some three year old in daycare who took some other kid's toy without asking. I wanted him to shut the fuck up, and know that I wasn't some cowed, whimpering female who was going to bow down to the big bad Dom and let him say whatever he wanted about me."

Vince shook his head. She normally wouldn't have given two fucks what Dominic thought about her or said about her. Dominic just wasn't important enough in her world for his thoughts and feelings to make that much of an impact on her. So what was this really about? "What is wrong with you today?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tempest snapped back. _What's wrong with me is that I love you and I couldn't stand to hear it thrown around in such a blasé manner that you don't love me back. That the state of things between us is just what Dom said, even if you won't admit it._

"It means, first you couldn't wait to get back here, then you couldn't stand to get back here, then when I wanted to get back here, I was an asshole for bringing it up, then you couldn't wait to get back here again, and couldn't wait to get rid of me. You couldn't get away from Bryce's fast enough. You could have come in and said hello. Let him know you were ok. But you couldn't wait to tear off back here. Then when I get here, you're hiding behind Leon and you don't even acknowledge my presence. Other than saying it was time to get back this morning I haven't done anything wrong today, for once. But you're still treating me like not only do I have the plague, I smacked you around too. So _what_ is wrong with you today?"

His words forced her to acknowledge one thing. He really hadn't done anything to deserve her treatment today. He might have been running scared when he'd said he wanted to leave, but he'd also certainly been right about what lay in wait for them in the garage. Dom had been ignorant and mad, and Leon had been mad and upset. But if he was running scared from what was between them, she'd only been running terrified. So weren't they even? It wasn't like she could stand there in the parking lot of Dom's garage and yell at him at the top of her lungs that she found herself hopelessly in love with him, despite the fact he'd done nothing to deserve it, and hadn't asked for it either. That it certainly would be far smarter if she could bring herself to hate him instead, but she couldn't. "Nothing's wrong with me," she mumbled back, knowing he wasn't going away without some sort of answer.

He could practically hear the wheels spinning in her head. She was lying to him and there wasn't a thing he could do about it. The only thing he could do was the only thing he planned to do. Take her out of the situation before Dom came out of the shop and made things even worse. "You haven't eaten yet today. You'll feel better after you eat."

Her eyes snapped to his in shock. "Where'd that come from?"

"Your blood sugar is low and it's making you sad and cranky. You need to eat."

"How the fuck did you know that?" She was puzzled with his insight.

He started to steer her toward the passenger side door of his car. "My mom was the same way. Strangely, her lips also turned the same shade of blue yours currently are when she needed to eat something. So let's go get some," he wondered what time it was. He had no idea. "Some whatever the fuckin' meal we should eat at this time of day is." He heard her laugh as he closed the door behind her, shielding her behind the tinted glass. He waved at Jesse to let him know everything was ok before he got into the car himself. He backed the car out of the spot and turned the nose toward the entrance of the lot. He watched Dom walk out of the building and wasn't sure how to feel about his friend. Dom was his boy, but damn, they said _he_ could be stupid with what left his mouth. So, because he hadn't decided if he was still pissed off with Dom, or amused that the small, troublesome woman in his car had brought him to his knees, he dodged around Dom rather than stopping as he was clearly expected to do, and squealed off down the street.

"He had something to say to you, or us," Tempest pointed out.

Vince shrugged. "Nothing I wanted to hear right now. He can say his piece later. Don't worry, he won't forget he had something to say in the meantime."

"He's got nothing to say that I wanna hear."

"Right now, that makes two of us. You goin' to races tonight, or bowing out so you don't have to be around him?"

"Oh, I'm goin'. I won't give him the satisfaction of thinking I'm not there only because I'm scared of him."

"You are one of the singly most defensive people I know."

"That's rich, coming from you."

Vince only smiled. She was right. He could be just as bad as her for getting his back up over simple things. He gave up the subject with a shrug. He just wanted to feed her and hopefully take the sad look off her face.

They were done eating by five and decided to just head home. Neither of them wanted to face Dominic again in the shop on his own turf. They both knew without saying that he'd be easier to deal with in the house, which was everyone's domain. When they got home no one was back from work yet. Without a word, Vince manoeuvred Tempest down the stairs ahead of himself and into his room. "Better if we're not right in his face the second he gets back."

"Yeah, but you don't have a TV in here or anything. So what are we gonna do until he comes home and comes looking for us?"

Much as he knew she had asked a serious question, and it hadn't dawned on her how he could chose to take what she'd said, he was still going to have some fun with her. "I'm sure I could entertain you without the benefit of TV. Save you the trouble of needing to get undressed to get dressed for races later."

She grinned in spite of herself. "You must think you're some slick."

"Well, someone tells me I am a couple times a day. Guess I just believe her."

"And what if he gets home and comes looking for you and finds you mid-act?"

"I hope he knows how to wait patiently."


	51. Of Underdogs and the War at Home

**AN: **Why am I updating again so soon? Fucked if I know...:D I'm home sick, no one's paying me any mind and I'm bored with Diablo II already :( I'm horrible at this being sick thing. Tummy says 'be lazy' and brain says 'you like this song, go dance like a nut case'. I'm really not crazy. All the voices in my head agree I'm not! So anyway, here's another chapter. I did warn ya'll that the action was going to get extreme and likely jump a smidge out of real into fantasy, so you can't say you didn't go into the story with your eyes open. And I have no idea what the secret message would have been Sir Knight, ;) Perhaps I'm not the one who needs to worry about their mental health :D. Anyway, read on, enjoy, review if you want. But just remember, look where all the reviews for last chapter got you! Another chapter only a day later. ;D**  
**

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Fifty One – **Of Underdogs and the War at Home**

Much to their surprise, no one ever came looking for them. They wandered up on their own around eleven, figuring it would soon be time to head for the warehouse.

"You feeling better?" Jesse asked Tempest as Vince pulled her down onto his lap in the living room.

Vince waited for her to answer as he wrapped an arm possessively around her waist. Being surrounded by the team had reminded him that he still had some unanswered questions about what was up with the scared look Leon had gotten on his face when Dom had said he'd better butt out unless he too was having sex with the girl in question. He was staking an ownership claim. He hated the fact he felt like he had to and he had a funny feeling if she figured out what he was doing she'd kick his ass solid.

Tempest couldn't win against the grin that wanted to spread over her face. "Much better, thank you." She wanted to ask Dom if his balls had recovered, or if they would remain too swollen to allow him to race tonight, but she decided that discretion was the better part of valour this time. She just glanced at him impertinently from under her lashes, letting him know she was no more scared of him now than she had been then.

Jesse groaned at the look on her face. "Don't say anything else. Please."

"Don't worry. I won't." She continued to grin evilly as she leaned back into Vince and rested her head on his shoulder. Ok, so she was in love with him and he didn't love her back. In four days she might not ever see him again. She had a lot of things to cram into four days. And she had to do it all without him knowing about it. To say she was shocked when he kissed her forehead was an understatement for sure. A gesture more loving than sexual right in front of all his friends? Wasn't very Vince-like. A fact Dominic certainly noticed, a silent growl turning the corners of his mouth down as he looked between his best friend and the girl in his lap. It was a fact Leon clearly noticed as well, looking away with a minute shake of his head, she noted.

"Let's get the fuck on the road," Dom finally said. Anything else he said was libel to see him and Vince finishing the conversation with their fists, again. And he had no desire to be pulling Letty off anyone. Not tonight. If anyone so much as grazed his crotch he'd be right back on the ground. The little bitch had gotten him dead on target.

Everyone headed for the door. "You taking your own car?" Vince asked Tempest as they waited for Leon, Jesse and Letty to put their shoes on and get out of the way so they could get out the door.

"Of course."

"You hopin' to get a race in?"

"Not so much. Just gonna sit there in my totally awesome Skyline and be totally awesome." She grinned up at him.

"You're totally evil, you get that right?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm evil and you love it."

"I love it when I'm pissed at Dom and you make him so angry I expect to see his head spinning right around any second."

"I seem to have that effect on him even when I don't nail him in the junk hard enough to bring him down."

Vince smirked. "Long as it's him and not me."

"Well, you have an added advantage over him."

"What's that?"

"I actually care about the functionality of your junk, every once in awhile."

"If you rendered Dom unable to," Vince cleared his throat, "function, Letty would definitely have something to say to you about it."

Tempest shrugged. "Well, I already told her what I thought about her threatening me, didn't I?"

"Evil." He pulled her against himself and kissed her. It didn't take her long to lean into his arms and kiss him back. He released her lips and grinned at her.

Before she could have an answer to his comments, Leon's head poked back into the house. "You two coming or staying here to suck face some more?" He smirked to take the sting out of his words. "Dom wants to know, though he didn't phrase it quite like that."

"I just bet he didn't. Not with his swollen nuts being a constant reminder of how much he doesn't like me."

Leon's smirk turned into a grin. "He had it comin' for what he said about you while you were right there. But don't tell him I said so."

"I won't. Let's go already." Tempest shoved Leon out the door and followed him before waiting on the step for Vince to follow. He waited until she was seated in her car before getting in his own. They backed down the driveway one after the other, before following the rest of the team off down the road. When they arrived, as per usual, they got parking spots and proceeded to be the center of attention for all the other attendees.

As Mia and Letty were currently ignoring her still, Tempest found herself glad for the presence of Vince, Leon and Jesse. Though they stayed with her, the situation was still tense. Dom was still not anywhere near over what had happened over the last two days and he was making his displeasure known with his attitude. And when the king frowned on a subject, that subject quickly became a persona non gratis in most social situations around the racing scene.

When Dom was finally challenged to a race, Leon sighed in relief. Even ten minutes free of Dom's oppressive presence was a blessing. Then Tempest and Vince decided they should go help line the route. Leon followed them, stifling a groan. The last thing he wanted was to find himself closer to Dominic again. He watched Tempest and Vince parked side by side a few meters back from the start line. Dom and his three competitors lined up, and everyone started to play the ever present game—hurry up and wait.

Many got out of their cars to mingle. The three of them stayed put. Leon didn't know why, but he wasn't going to question it too hard. Sitting in his car behind his tinted glass removed him somehow from all the drama that was his life of late, and he really needed the time to regroup. He realized as he glanced out his window, that due to how Tempest and Vince had parked, they could converse without leaving their cars as her right hand drive position put her right next to Vince's left hand door. So that was why they hadn't bothered to get out of their cars. She had her chin rested on top of her arms, which were folded along the top of her doorsill, and was looking at Vince as he talked to her. Occasionally Tempest interjected something, as he occasionally saw her mouth move but Vince was doing most of the talking. He couldn't hear what they were saying and he was glad. The two of them pretending to be ok with each other and how they were wasn't ok with him because it wasn't _going_ to be ok for them. Not in the end. He had no idea what was going to happen with them in the end, but he did have a sense of unease which was more than vague that it couldn't and wouldn't be good.

A tiny Asian female walked out onto the street and stood between the middle two cars, out in front of them a few paces. She lifted her arms into the air as if paying homage to the stars. The way her eyes stayed firmly focused on the four idling cars on the line showed that—to her at least—the cars were the stars of the evening. Heavenly beings brought to earth by steel and rubber.

"Finally," Leon muttered to himself out loud. The sooner Dom raced the sooner the night would be over and he could stop pretending not to watch someone he had come to care for very much set herself up to take the ultimate fall one more time. One time she fell, she was going to fly apart into more pieces than anyone could put back together, and he didn't want to see it. Much as he'd love to have her around on a permanent basis, he was still glad she was going home. Better for her to be far far away from Vince. Better for Vince to have her stick around, but he'd never see it.

Before he could spend any more time being morose and analyzing something he had no say over anyway, the girl dropped her arms and four earthbound shooting stars rushed past her, leaving tails of dust and debris in their wake.

And before he could wrap his brain around what he was seeing, the lightning painted Skyline was streaking after them. He looked over at Vince, and found a look of shock to mirror his own on V's face. So Tempest's move wasn't one they had planned between the two of them. Leon lowered his window. "What the fuck is she up to?"

"Fucked if I know. One second she was just sittin' there takin' to me. The next she just up and took off after them."

"She gets in front of him there's gonna be a war."

"Tell me somethin' I don't know." Vince sighed and looked after the five cars now racing down the street. "Think we should haul ass down to the end in case they go at each other?"

"I think we should pray she comes in after Dom."

If someone had asked her in the moment she'd tossed her car in gear and squealed off down the street what she was thinking, she wouldn't have had an answer for them. She hadn't really thought. She'd just looked at Dominic, sitting on the line in his car looking so smug, so confident there wasn't a person in the city who could take him, and something inside her had snapped. She was fairly sure she could take him. Not that she would ever have been given a chance to find that out. Not legitimately. But she could make her own chance; if she didn't mind running a second behind the time everyone else had started.

He was such an arrogant asshole! Thought he had the right to talk down to her any time he wanted. She slammed the car from second to third with an economy of angry movement. Force feed her orders and expected her to take it with a smile. Relegate her to the status of some skank one of his boys was doing just because she was there simply because he didn't like her and didn't like the way she stood up to his shit. Didn't like the fact he was worried that she'd decide to stick around to be with Vince. Well, since he was basing his right to do all those things on the fact that he was the fastest at getting his car from start to finish, she'd take away his position and see where it ended him up. If she was faster, the basis of his authority over her was gone. Even if it was only in his own head in the first place.

She turned on her nitrous system on the fly and turned the controller system off at the same time. She was doing this one fully manual. She didn't want some computer chip deciding when and how much. She knew she'd have to do it herself if she wanted to catch up.

Her car was set up for speed, and it was showing that heritage now as it flew down some unknown Los Angeles street. By the time she hit wide open throttle in third, she was about to pass the trailer of the field. That was when she shoved the gearshift down into fourth, pedal still to the floor. And then, she pressed her finger down onto her left horn button and felt her car respond as a flow of nitrous good for an extra four hundred horsepower, give or take, was injected into her intake.

She was in second to Dominic's first by the time she shoved the car up into fifth. She didn't let up off the nitrous even for the half second it took her to shift gears. She knew that her ten pound bottle was good for about twenty seconds, so she knew she should have more than enough spray to finish the race. Her only question was if she'd finish it in first or second.

Vince tried to let things play out how they would. But he just couldn't. In the end he started his car and took off after the pack of racers. He couldn't leave her to face Dom's wrath on her own. But as he followed them down the road, he started to get mad. With her.

She hadn't been part of the race. She hadn't been invited or bought in. She'd just taken it upon herself to jump in after the fact. She was essentially cheating, even if she was doing it with a disadvantage. It wasn't the way they rolled, and she had to know it. But she'd still jumped in without looking and opened a Pandora's box that no one might be able to close. If she won, it was going to get messy. Thankfully, he didn't think she could. But still, it was the principle of the thing. She was going to catch hell. At least if Dom saw him 'handling her' he might not jump into the fray himself.

With the finish line looming, Tempest realized she was never going to overcome Dominic's head start if she raced the formulaic way she currently was. With a quick wish for luck, and for nothing bad to happen to her car, she thrust her thumb down onto her right horn button, activating her second bottle of nitrous, and boosting her shot to an unprecedented, honestly stupid amount. She bit her lip and started a fervent chant that her exhaust profile was open enough, that her fuel pump was strong enough, and that her fuel injectors were big enough to overcome the detonation that was very likely, and could easily fry her very expensive, very hard to replace engine with so much nitrous delaying the burn in her cylinders. She doubted very much even her chipped ECU could retard her timing enough to overcome the lean condition she was sure she was creating.

Her car surged ahead with so much force, it literally tossed her back into her seat. The back end started to step out but the traction governing system in her all wheel drive took over and kept her going straight. Before she knew it she was flashing past Dominic and over the finish line, her bumper just edging his out. Having started just over a whole car length behind him, she figured she had done really well. Really well at a very bad thing, that was. But that seemed to be her forte. Being very good at being very bad.

Before she could think about getting stopped and turned around, something jolted her forward in her seat. A quick glance in the rear view showed Dominic had ridden up on her tail before allowing his front facia to clip her rear bumper. She put on a little burst of speed to get clearance before she spun her car around one eighty and slammed it into reverse. She flew down the road backwards, nose to nose with Dominic's car.


	52. Of Hide and Go Seek

AN: Nothin much to say. Ya'll know how this works…

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By- _TempestRaces_

Chapter 52 – **Of Hide and Go Seek**

Vince was still half of the quarter mile stretch behind them when he saw her tail lights come on, and Dom's a hair after hers. He had watched Dom clip her, but he couldn't find it in him to fault Dom for it. He had every right to be pissed. He was more than slightly impressed, in spite of himself, when he watched her slide around and go nose to nose with Dom down the road, going about fifty miles an hour in reverse. He was willing to bet that her car was well over the red line to hit that speed in a direct drive gear, but she clearly thought it was better to be keeping an eye on the very pissed off Dominic.

With another quick motion she swung the ass end of her car right and then hit third gear, if he didn't miss his guess. She took back off down the road the way she had come without stopping. After she streaked by him, he spun his car around in a power slide and took off after her. As pissed as he was with her, he didn't want to leave her to face Dominic alone. Dom passed him going race worthy speeds a second later, clearly in a rush to get back to the start and confront Tempest. Vince pushed the gas harder in an effort to keep up. "Fuckin' stupid," he growled to himself. She was trying to get herself killed? Again?

By the time he made it back to the crush of people and cars which made up the start line, Tempest was out of her car surrounded by people who couldn't believe that someone had had the balls to crash a race featuring Dominic Toretto. Let alone a female someone who had not only had the balls to crash the race, but win it too. Leon got over to her first, Vince noted. Leon then proceeded to try and convince her to get back in her car and leave before Dom fought his way through the throng of people. The crowd around her wasn't having that. Not even though Vince could see the realization light her eyes from his distant position that Leon was right, and she should flee the scene before her stunt came back to bite her on the ass.

Vince started to fight his way through the crowd harder than before. He was hoping he'd make it to her side before Dom did. He had luck on his side and he did make it to where she and Leon were still standing before Dom joined them.

"What the fuck were you thinking?" he snarled the second he was close enough to take hold of her upper arm and shake her.

She put her free hand on his chest. Half to keep him at arm's length because he was quite mad, and half because she knew her touch would turn his mind off his anger and onto his libido if she kept her hand there long enough. "I didn't think about too much, in all honesty. I just reacted. Mr. bossy, arrogant, prick thinks he's got a right to be that way because no one's better than him in a stupid car race. Well there, I'm better than him in a stupid car race. Maybe he can stop talking down to me like I'm some stupid bitch now."

Her touch started to drive him crazy, like it always did. "Why should he when you act like one? What you did wasn't ok, Temp. It was bitchy and if you were a man, I'd let him kick your ass. The only reason why I won't is because you _are_ a female. Even if you do refuse to act like it most of the time."

"I'm sorry, what did you just call me?" she asked. Her voice was low and cold and her eyes had gone flat and hard in that instant. When he didn't answer her right away she repeated herself. "What did you call me? Because I know I couldn't have heard you right. So you better repeat yourself."

Vince was very conscious of the fact that Dominic was now standing just behind him, content for the moment to listen to him 'putting her in her place.' Dom was likely getting off on it too, he noted with distaste. It wasn't why he was doing it, and the fact that Dominic was likely finding it even better that it was him saying these things to Tempest because it would hurt her even more just because it _was_ him made it even more distasteful. But there was nothing he could do about it. If it wasn't him, it would be Dom and Dom would be ten times harsher. And when Dom was harsh with her, she tended to react with violence, and the two of them would end up brawling at races. "I think you heard me just fine. Get in your car and get out of here. There's no place here for people who act like spoiled brats."

"Man, lay off her!" a random man said from the crowd. "She's got more guts than anyone else 'round here. She saw what she wanted she went after it, yo. Took it too, even with them having a head start. Stop doggin' on her for being good enough to win."

"Butt out," Vince growled without so much as looking in the man's direction. "I'll handle shit with my bitch my own way." The second the stupid words left his mouth he wanted to take them back. He was just so mad about the random stranger's words, and scared about what Dom would do to Tempest, that he didn't have even the small amount of control he normally did over his mouth. And before he could process the shocked gasp rolling through the crowd, his head had been snapped all the way to the right, and he was spitting blood out onto the pavement. She'd slapped him across the face as hard as she could, and it bloody well stung like a bastard. Not to mention had been hard enough to split his lip. As hard as she could was hard enough that had she punched him, he might just be out a tooth or two. Not that he didn't have it coming.

"You can't handle what you never had," she informed him in a low voice, an evil sneer twisting her expressive face even as angry tears glittered unshed in her eyes. She finally fought her way back into her car, and like the crowd sensed the immediate drama was played out, they dispersed. He watched as Leon looked at him in total disgust before getting into his car and heading back to the warehouse alley, the same way in which Tempest had gone.

"Well, she did win," Dom imparted to Vince as they watched the crowd disperse. "But then again, I guess she didn't."

"I really hope you aren't trying to convince me that her losing me over what I said makes up for her beating you in some stupid street race," Vince growled, not turning to look at Dom. He knew if he saw a smirk on Dom's face, it wouldn't be _Tempest_ and Dom that would need to be torn apart off the ground. "I really hope you don't think that I did that for you. That I took away her dignity in return for her doing the same to you. I really hope that isn't where you're going with this. Because that's not why it happened and it's not a good thing any of it happened."

"Not for you it wasn't. You sure won't be hooking up with her tonight. You found the one sure way to make sure she makes up with Letty. And if you so much as look at another girl with Letty in the vicinity, you're a dead man. But, for the record, she really did have it coming for doing such an underhanded thing."

"You spend the last few days treating her like dirt on the ground, or like a dog trained to heel, and she's the only one who did an underhanded thing? I don't agree with what she did. And I really did think she deserved a set down for it. In another way, I really think you had it comin' 'cause god knows you spent enough time messin' around in her head. But most of the stuff I said to her was to make sure you left her alone. Then that other guy talked to her, even in an offhanded way and I got so mad that I lost control of what I said."

"Because some other guy talked to her?" Dom's tone was incredulous. He sighed a millisecond later. "Why don't you just tell her the truth and make it all go away V? You can fix this in a heartbeat if you're honest and you know it. Just tell her man." It would likely be the beginning of her sticking around permanently, but to be honest, he was sick of watching them dance around it and hurt each other in the name of looking tough anyway. Vince was his best friend. He deserved to be happy. Finally. So if this was where happiness was for Vince, so be it. But that didn't mean he had to like it, Dom decided as he rubbed his head. Not when the girl in question hated him solid, and had just put him down in front of over half the greater Los Angeles street racing population.

"Tell her what Dom?" Vince asked angrily.

"That you're in love with her."

Back at the alley, the second she'd parked her car, Tempest had been mobbed by people. Most of them wanted to tell her how great she was. How much she rocked. She didn't feel like she was so great. Not after what Vince had said. She knew she shouldn't have done what she'd done. But she had some honest motivations for it too. And rather than feeling vindicated, now she felt childish—small and petty. Not to mention sick over what Vince had called her. But she didn't let it show. Not the 'great' Tempest who'd just beaten Dominic Toretto with a trailing start. She kept a cheerful smile pinned to her face. Being a ruler was more about an image than about reality and she knew it. Since she'd sacrificed so much for the position, she was going to enjoy it for one evening. Even if it killed her.

Then Jesse found her. "What was that?"

"Jesse! Thank god. I want you to take a look at the car before I drive it home. Please?"

"You know how stupid it was for you to do that T? Jesus." He allowed himself to be pulled closer to the Skyline and wrapped an arm around her slim shoulders in spite of himself. He looked into her eyes, and saw the answer she was about to have for him mirrored there. "And I don't mean whatever you think you did to the car either. You can't roll like that against Dom!"

"I gotta figure no one filled you in on what you missed in the garage did they?"

"No, what did I miss?" _And what does it have to do with the stupid stunt you just pulled?_

"Dom told Vince right in front of me that I was nothing better than a drunken booty call, and that he better learn where to prioritize me in his life. That was what brought about the whole kick to the balls thing, and I guess it wasn't enough to get me over anything because when I saw his smug face sitting there waiting to win, again, and using that fact as an excuse to act like he owned the world, I just snapped. I didn't intend to do it, I swear, but I just snapped. Now, please tell me I didn't mess my car up over it. Between you and that car, you've got the complete and total list of things in my life that haven't let me down lately."

He kissed her forehead tiredly. He felt half responsible for her predicaments. He'd brought her into his world and into the life. He knew she wasn't prepared for the culture shock of Los Angeles, and he hadn't spent enough time since she'd arrived being there for her and showing her the ropes. He'd allowed her to spend far too much time with Vince, despite knowing it wasn't a good idea. He'd allowed her to continue to be around Dominic, despite knowing it wasn't a good idea. And now she was broken and terrified. He was the older one, and the one who knew the score. He should have taken better care of her and he felt every ounce of the weight of responsibility on him now. His only excuse was that generally, she _was_ the mature, tough, smart and savvy one while he was the excitable one who lacked common sense, and as such he wasn't use to _her_ needing _his_ guidance. He leaned his cheek onto the top of her head from his considerable height advantage and looped his arms around her loosely. "Let's take a look at poor Ray then, ok?"

She sighed tiredly as she leaned into her cousin. Finally, a truly safe place to rest a moment. Why hadn't she turned to Jesse long and ever ago? She got so caught up in being the tougher one, the one with more street smarts, that she never took a moment to see that Jesse knew how to fit into the dynamic of his house in ways she didn't, and never would. If she'd spend more time watching Jesse for cues how to go about, she wouldn't find herself in half the mess she now did. But she couldn't dwell on it. What she had done was done. She couldn't take it back now. So instead she popped the bonnet and watched as Jesse lifted it onto the prop and started smelling and probing.

"Seems ok. What did you do to it, exactly?"

"Turned off the nitrous controller and dumped the spray straight in on my own time."

"Well, that is why we put the activation buttons in it, in spite of you having a controller on it, T. So you could activate it manually if you wanted to."

"Yeah, but you never intended for me to activate both bottles at the same time when you set the system up for a four hundred shot, did you?"

"Um, no. You might have gotten five hundred horse out of it, but it was pretty much overkill. The system can't pump enough fuel into the mix to use that much nitrous at one time."

"Well, it gave it a bit more kick than the single bottle did."

"I'll just bet. But a mix that lean was definitely causing knock. How long did you do that for?"

"A couple seconds, tops."

"Not long enough to damage anything, I'd say. It all looks like its fine. It wasn't burning any oil when you backed it into the spot, so I don't think you burned your rings." Jesse slammed the hood closed. When he turned around it was to find Mia and Letty standing behind him. "Hey ladies," he said, smiling slightly.

"Hey," Letty answered. She turned her attention to Tempest directly after she answered Jesse, showing without a doubt who she had come over to see. "That was some stunt you pulled."

"Yeah, what can I say? Live fast, die young, leave a good lookin' corpse." Tempest smiled. It was clearly strained.

Letty moved in closer. "Just between you'n me? It was about time someone reminded him that he has lost before and will lose again. He was getting a little hard to live with." She grinned.

A small, yet finally genuine smile lifted the corners of Tempest's mouth. "Well, I'm glad someone's not totally pissed at me for doing such a stupid, bitchy thing."

Instinctively, Letty knew those words were not Tempest's own to describe the situation. She didn't know very many females who would ever say they did a stupid, bitchy thing. Her eyes narrowed without her knowledge. "Who told you that was what you did."

A sanguine, one shouldered shrug was Tempest's first answer, never big on being a whiner or a tattle tale. Just suck it up and move on was her normal method of dealing with situations. When she felt Letty's eyes boring into her and not letting up she surrendered what the other girl wanted. "Vince."

One of Letty's eyebrows rose skyward. "Vince? He said that to you?"

"Yeah. And that if I was a man he would have let Dom kick my ass."

Letty seemed to let the subject drop at that. She spent a few more minutes hanging out with Jesse, Mia and Tempest before she spotted Vince and Dominic across the expanse of bodies in the alley. She excused herself and crossed to them. "I otta knock the two of your thick, ugly heads together and see if it pounds any sense into them. One of them at least would be nice."

"Letty," Dom sighed. "What'd I do now?"

"I don't think you really need to ask that question. What haven't you and your Neanderthal best friend done today? Call her a drunken booty call, a worthless slut, a bitch. No wonder she's in a bad mood all the time. Between the two of you all she gets is fucked. Figuratively by one and literally _and_ figuratively by the other. Jesus Christ, cut her some slack and leave her alone for the next few days. Both of you." On that snarled note she turned on her heel and started to walk away.

Before she got too far, someone cried out that the police were en route to their location and there was a mad scramble for everyone to get to their cars and depart. In the scuffle to rush to her Nissan, Letty forgot about the fact she had brought Mia with her, that the other girl had no ride of her own. She was so upset with Dom and Vince it never entered her head that she'd left Mia behind until she was half way home. She couldn't double back now, she knew she'd risk running into a patrol car that way. She could only hope that Mia had been quick enough to jump into one of the other rides closer to her at the time of the scramble.


	53. Of Black Pots and Meeting Kettles

AN: Bad Tempest doesn't update enough! Bad, bad Tempest. I know. I'm sorry. I started off so well with this one too. I'll get it all posted I swear. Might not be in as big a hurry as at first, but it'll all get posted. Whether part two will ever hit the internet or not I dunno but we'll see. Lil' miss Tempest has a lot on her plate right now :) Just so we're all clear…I don't own 'hot cop' and I took some liberties with his character after I borrowed him. Unfortunately his character is all I'm at liberty to take liberties with. :D Anywho, here we go again, ya'll know the drill.

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Fifty Three – **Of Black Pots and Meeting Kettles**

With a long suffering sigh, Tempest looked over at the dark girl beside her as she flew toward the mouth of the alley. What on earth had she done to deserve ending up with Mia in her car, after everything else? Was there some karmic process or God of some sort laughing at her right now? _Whatever_ she'd done that she needed to be punished for, what she was getting had to be way more than she deserved.

"Thanks for not leaving me behind," Mia offered, her voice almost shy.

"Yeah, whatever," Tempest growled back.

"I never got a chance to tell you, but I'm sorry for what happened the other day. I didn't mean anything by it. It just sort of happened."

"Yeah, that's super. Great reason. You know as well as I do that you have no interest in Vince. Who is it helping to act like you might change your mind?"

"No one." Mia fluttered a hand in the air in an attempt to organize what she wanted to say. "It's just that he's a different person around you, and it confused me. I shouldn't have let that confusion come across like I might be changing my mind about him. Besides that, he wouldn't be that person for me. You change him, in a good way."

"Remind me of that the next time he's calling me a bitch in front of a crowd of strangers, would you?"

Mia sighed. "I never said you made him smarter."

She said in such an honest, long suffering tone that Tempest couldn't help her laugh. "Fair enough."

"Can I ask you something? Even if it's something I have no right to ask?"

Mia's question startled Tempest. The car had fallen into silence which had remained unbroken for several minutes. Tempest had been concentrating too hard on her driving and avoiding cars, police and pedestrians and it had felt like Mia had run out of things to say. "Sure, I suppose." She dodged another patrol car of L.A.'s finest, listening to her car for the slightest sound that was out of the ordinary. Despite Jesse's assurances, she wasn't totally convinced she hadn't harmed her car with her stunt.

"Why do you keep letting Vince back in after each idiotic thing he does? He just hurts you time and time again, but it seems like you give him chance after chance anyway."

Tempest thought about Mia's question. She really thought about it. "I don't have a good reason. Every time I have myself convinced that I won't be so stupid again, that I really am done with him for good, he does something to change my mind." A grin took over her face, even as she dodged between two cop cars that tried to box her in. "I pulled a knife on him yesterday night."

"What?" Mia questioned in shock.

"Yeah, he had me pinned, ordered me to start to strip and when I bent over to stretch my pants over the top of my boot where the knife was hidden, I came up with it in my hand, pressed it to his jugular and told him where to get bent."

Given that Tempest was still alive, and seemingly in fine health, Mia had to figure that her stunt hadn't backfired. "So how'd that end with you and him still being all over each other?" Mia blushed. "We, um, couldn't help but overhear certain things when we were having dinner."

"He took the knife from me, and once," Tempest looked at Mia with an eyebrow cocked, before quickly turning her gaze back to the road, "we were done, he picked it back up off the floor and put it back into the sheath in my boot. I would have cut him. He had to have known it. I wouldn't have let him bleed out in a club maintenance room, but I would have cut him bad enough to protect myself and he knew it. But he gave me back the knife anyway. It didn't enter his head to keep it, or even to warn me against ever pulling it on him again. I can't promise you that I would have done the same. Fuck, I know I wouldn't have. I would have lectured on what would happen to him if he ever thought to pull a blade on me again."

"And he never once went off on you for it? Not in any way?"

"No. So I gave him another chance last night, and today. But there is no next chance from what he said tonight."

"You sure?"

"Could you look at the man who called you 'his bitch' in front of about ten thousand people the same way?"

"I guess not."

Finally clear of the crush of other racers and cops, Tempest passed a few 'normal' cars to give her a cushion of space from the pack of other decked out cars and turned up and down a few streets to further distance herself from the others. She knew without question that being caught in a pack of other racers was a sure assumption of guilt on behalf of the cops. Given that she had a large quantity of cash in her trunk, she really didn't want to be caught. Even if the money was hidden below the subwoofer and spare tire cover. If a cop found it, it was going to raise questions she did not want to be answering. The only problem with changing direction so many times was she found herself totally lost. "I hate to admit this, but I got no sweet clue where we are."

"Far from home, but its ok. Turn left here."

Tempest did as instructed and followed several more of Mia's directions. She thought they were home free. She figured if they hadn't been caught by now, they weren't going to be. That was when she looked up and saw the flashing lights in her rear view. "Ah fuck. Do I outrun them or pull over?"

Mia glanced in the mirror on her side. "Well, I don't think he has any proof you're doing anything illegal right now, does he?"

"No, but the whole car might very well be illegal down here. I didn't look at it too hard because I really wanted to take it."

"Can you outrun him?"

"Yes, but not if he calls in a bunch of backup. There's no where along this road to lose him. So if I outpace him, he's libel to just call in a bunch of backup and have them block the road off up ahead anyway."

Mia felt panic bubble up. She couldn't get picked up by the cops. Dom would kill her. "What're we going to do?"

"Well, don't panic for fuck's sake. They smell fear and nervousness." Tempest looked over at Mia and saw the sheer terror on the other girl's face. "I'm being facetious. It's going to be fine. At worst, I'll likely get a fine. Might as well pull over and see what he wants." She signalled her lane change and started the process of pulling over. On some instinct she wouldn't look too hard at, as she drifted slowly off the road, she wiggled her lacy black tank top up her body and looped the hem of it around the rucked part between her breasts a few times, securing the tail behind her bra. When she was done, it looked as though she was wearing a lacy bikini top, her stomach on display. For good measure she opened the top two buttons of her low rise, button fly jeans which exposed her black lace underwear.

"What are you doing?" Mia hissed as she watched in the side mirror, waiting for a cop to approach the now shut down vehicle.

"Hoping it's not a chick cop," Tempest answered with a smirk. "I'm stacking the deck." She looked down at her now barely covered breasts and exposed abdomen. "As it were."

"What if he's old and nasty?"

"He's even more likely to like what he sees then, isn't he? Let's hope against female and gay for now."

"If I get taken in, Dom's gonna kill me!"

"Last time I checked, riding in a car wasn't illegal."

Before Mia could answer a cop was knocking on her window, which Tempest lowered, given that Mia couldn't find the control on the unfamiliar door. The cop shined his flashlight into the car, and upon not finding the steering wheel, bent over and looked into the cabin. Tempest waved jauntily from her right hand seat. The cop stood up and walked around the nose of the car. Tempest watched him shaking his head as he skirted the nose.

"License and registration please Miss."

"Was I doing something wrong officer?" The cop's voice was pleasant, carrying a slight accent. From what she could see of his body, he clearly worked out. A lot.

"Do you _have_ a license to operate this vehicle Miss?"

"Yes Officer," she forced a giggle. "I do. But it's a horrible picture of me. I look so much better in person." Another vapid giggle.

"Can I see it anyway?"

If she didn't miss her guess, there was laughter in the cop's voice. His flashlight certainly was pointed straight at the open top of her pants. She pouted even though he couldn't yet see her face. She knew the tone would carry into her voice. "I guess so, if you insist."

"I'm afraid I do."

Tempest handed over her license only, as that was the only thing requested the last two times. The cop took it. She leaned out the window slightly to watch him check it out. At least his light was off her crotch now, she mused with a smirk.

"Registration Miss? Or dare I ask, given that this clearly isn't a car of American origin."

"Coming from someone with a touch of Ireland in his voice, that's a bit like the pot calling the kettle black, isn't it?" Tempest asked cheekily. She cursed herself internally a moment later. She'd forgotten her airhead act. The cop laughed out loud before he could catch himself. She handed over her registration with a grin. She was enjoying this battle of wits, or pretending not to have any, with one of California's finest. "You'll find the car isn't of American origins and neither is the owner. But I guess you had some idea about that when you tried to run the plates, no?"

"What sort of car is this miss?" He chose not to answer her question about her license plate, which clearly bore a picture of the Confederation Bridge, not something found on the plate of any American states.

"It's a Nissan, Officer. Doesn't it say so on my registration?" she asked in mock confusion.

"Yes, but a Nissan Skyline isn't a car I'm familiar with, so I just figured the registration was doctored or fake."

"Not at all. It is a 1990 Nissan Skyline, which is insured as a 1990 Nissan 240sx because the Skyline wasn't available in North America and the 240sx is the closest Nissan car that was."

"Is this car legal for operation in the USA, Miss?"

She leaned out the window to look the cop in his eyes. His gorgeous eyes, she noted with a grin. "I dunno officer. You tell me," she smiled in a flirtatious manner. "If you wanna frisk me, I won't put up too much of a fight. But we both know I don't have a lot of extra room in these jeans for hiding things." She watched as her words brought a grin to his lips before he wiped it off with some effort.

"Can you get out of the car Miss, and pop the bonnet please."

"Sure." Tempest did as asked. She got out of her seat before bending over in the cop's direction and fumbling for the hood release. She was willing to bet that the extra slack in the waist of her pants granted by the open buttons made sure the top of her lacy boyshorts peaked out. She walked around to the nose of her car and the cop joined her.

"Open the hood please."

"I don't know how officer." She pouted. "That's what mechanics are for."

"You drive a car like this and don't know how to check the oil?"

"_That's_ what full service is for."

The cop took in her lean body with a look. He hit her hands with his flashlight. "Where'd the dirt come from?"

"I'm a dirty girl. It coulda come from any number of places." She grinned. "Officer?"

"Officer Street."

"Seriously?" she asked before she could help herself. They sent officer Street to break up street races? That was pretty damn funny. She kept her snort of amusement mostly to herself.

"Yeah, why?"

"Not a name we have where I come from," she retorted quickly, thinking on her feet. Making the street racing connection wouldn't be a smooth move right now, and she knew it. "So, Officer Street," she said as she watched him pop her hood, "what are we looking for?"

"NOS."

"NOS?"

"Yeah, street racers use it to boost their horsepower and go insanely fast down our public roads. But you wouldn't know anything about that," he looked at her license, which was still in his hand, "Miss James, would you?"

"No Officer Street, I wouldn't." She pouted, telling herself she wasn't technically lying. She wasn't using NOS, she was using nitrous though. A fine line, she told herself, but a line none the less, push come to shove. "Was I speeding when you stopped me?"

"No. But there was reported racing in this area tonight, and your car fits the profile." He shone his light into the engine compartment.

The sight of her engine filled her with motherly pride. She wanted to fawn over it, cop watching her or no. She wanted to crow about how she'd built it, designed it, raced it, won with it. She wanted to brag it was hers, all hers. That it had beaten the king off his throne straight onto his overdeveloped ass muscles. But instead she looked down in feigned puzzlement. "So how will we know if we've found NOS?" She put her hands on her hips as she looked at her engine with total concentration. She sincerely hoped her pants didn't fall down.

"We should see the injectors." Officer Street, who knew next to nothing about high performance automobiles, as he was far more into high performance guns, looked where he had been taught to look for her nitrous injection nozzles. He couldn't see any sign of them. He moved to the still open driver's side door and checked everywhere he could think to check for the activation buttons or anything that would prove the vehicle was equipped for nitrous. He couldn't find a damn thing. He looked up at the woman still standing in front of her car and caught the playfully smug look she was giving him when she didn't think he was watching.

She was playing the vapid coquette and it intrigued him to find out what was really lurking under the surface of the toned body and all too intelligent green eyes. Her eyes gave her away. They were entirely too expressive by far to allow her to play dumb. She knew there was nitrous installed in her car and she knew why he couldn't find it. But he couldn't prove it, and more over he didn't want to. Because he was going to do something he rarely did. He was going to let her go. With a stipulation or two tacked on, of course.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" All she hoped was that he didn't attempt to honk her horn. With the nitrous system turned on—which it still was—the buttons did not work to control the horn.

Laughter veritably danced in her eyes. It was barely restrained in her voice. So many of his fellow officers would have attempted to break her down, cited her for whatever they could just because she was so smug. But he couldn't find himself to care. She was just so _good_ at it. Surely he was entitled to play god every once in awhile. All the others let people go when the mood moved them, but he never did. They were supposed to be tough on street racing. And in principle he definitely agreed with the zero tolerance policy. But he'd never met a racer quite like Miss James before. He rejoined her at the nose of her car. "No, but I suspect you knew all along I wouldn't." He handed her back her license and registration. "Is that your real name, or are the papers faked?"

"That is my real name," she admitted with another fake bubbly grin and giggle. "So I like had my car painted like a storm. You get it? Tempest. Storm. See?" Her head cocked to the side and the same mirth flickered in her eyes in the most enticing way.

"I see a lot of things, and that is one of them," he grinned back in spite of himself, and fought an urge to tap her softly on her slightly tip tilted nose. "You do know that lighted license plate frames are illegal in the state of California unless they are red, don't you miss?"

"I did not know that, no, Officer Street. Thank you for the tip. I'll turn them off for the rest of my stay."

"Just having them on the vehicle is illegal, Miss James."

"Please, call me Tempest. And I can't imagine I'll be able to find someone to remove them in the few days I'll be here Officer. What should I do?" She tipped her head to the side in question, fighting a grin. They both knew what she was doing, what act she was running. She found that made it even more fun.

"Well, if you'd see your way into having dinner with me tomorrow night, I could see my way into over looking it. And making sure you don't have any trouble for the rest of your visit."

"Well, gimme your number, and if I can fit it in, I'll give you a call."

"If that's the best you can do, that's fine. But in that case, the best I can do is let you go tonight. If you get picked up by someone else, I won't be able to help you."

"Fair enough," Tempest answered. She held out her hand. "Give me your number and I'll be in touch."

He gave her a card with his name and number on it and let her get back into her car. She called out the still open window. "Be safe Officer Street! Have a good night!"

"You too Miss," he checked himself, "Tempest. Have a good evening, Tempest." The unfamiliar name felt awkward on his tongue, but it suited her perfectly, he mused. "Drive careful and safe."

With a laugh, Tempest started the car and pulled away from the curb. She was still laughing like a loon a few minutes later. Mia, once they were safely underway without a trip downtown, or a fine, joined her.

Mia could only muse that having balls as big as a man could be a benefit in a female sometimes. Only because she'd been courageous enough to play the games she had, Tempest had not only gotten away with all her violations, but done it to end up with a date with the hansom officer.


	54. Of Sweet Obliviousness and Game Points

**AN: Blame this update on my playlist :) Right now it consists of a lot of Kate Havnevik mixed with a little Blue October (Balance Beam – 'she's a magnetic girl that I hardly even know…so this is not another love song' - and Into the Ocean), Ivy (Edge of the Ocean), and David Usher's The Music (get this song cause its beautiful. The whole thing is just like one great poem from start to finish). I have a forum, and really, I suppose I could be using it for this stuff. And I do have a music thread. So if anyone wants to share what they play or lyrics or whatever, please do. I have a huge mp3 library but it will never be big enough.**

**That and an email today made me aware that I've left everyone hanging on Catalyst for pretty much a year with no updates and I figured I could use this as a way to give a brief explanation to everyone else who might be wondering what's up with that what _is_ up with that. I am eternally sorry. I really am. I have no excuses for it. I know how the story ends, what happens. I just don't quite know how I'm going to get there yet. Other things got priority and I got lazy. I stopped sitting down and making time. But I am working on it. Picking it out as it comes to me. As for all the others, I just don't know. I know how Adrenaline ends. But I don't know if I'll ever be able to finish it. I'll try. And Chrome, I really don't know if I ever knew exactly where that was going. Velocity Shift will be finished someday just because I love Storm too much not to finish. As for the story I had planned for after her role in Puzzling Pieces, I don't know. **

**Add to that the fact I've been downsized out of my job and still don't know where my next paycheck's gonna come from and I've got a lot more on my mind than my writing lately. A _lot_ more. But I've been working a bit harder at it. Trying to remember why it was important to me in the first place, and I'll keep working at it, because it still is a very large part of who I am. I only have two more days to write for poor Temp and then this book, book one, is done anyway. So I hope since I have it all mapped out it goes well. Then I'll have to see how part two goes. But I'm not going to work at it too much more than I have already until after I finish Catalyst. Not a total asshole Vince has been hard for me to channel lately. I think because I actually really like how this story is turning out and this Vince feels very real to me. At least, real to me for how he would have been at 22 :) **

**Ciao, T**

**Oh yeah, the character of 'hot cop' still isn't mine, and while I have taken liberties with his character, that is still all I am free to take liberties with :D We all know that were he actually mine, I'd be pimping him out and making lots of money, no job needed :D He does have a bit more of a role in a later chapter or two, but I still wouldn't get attached to him were I you…**

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Fifty Four – **Of Sweet Obliviousness and Game Points**

"Where are Mia and Tempest?" Dom asked Letty as he cornered her in the kitchen, far enough away from the living room stereo that he could hear her answer.

"I dunno. Should we go looking for them?"

"I don't know. What do you think? Was she pissed enough to leave Mia behind?"

"I don't think she's mean spirited enough to leave Mia behind. No matter how mad she's been with her lately."

Before Dom could answer, he heard a cheer go up in the living room. He walked down the hall just in time to find a crowd of admirers offering Tempest more congratulations on beating him. Some of the anger reared back up. She shouldn't have been in the race in the first place. She _really_ shouldn't have been able to beat him. But she had, and there wasn't a lot he could do about it now. He already hated her. What else was there? He had to be slightly grateful she'd brought his sister home safe. Someone killed the stereo. Leon rushed up to the girls.

"Where the fuck were you two?"

"We hit some heavy, heavy heat and traffic leaving and I had a hard time shaking them. By the time we were clear we were way off course. And then in the process of getting back on the path home, we got pulled over."

Leon wondered about the grin on her face. "And you're happy about that?" He watched Vince stalk closer out of the corner of his eye. Clearly, neither he nor Vince had missed her change in attire.

Before Tempest could answer, Mia chimed in. "She's sitting there in what is likely an illegal car, with tons of definitely illegal accessories, cool as can be, playing stupid with the totally hot cop. He gets her out of the car to make her show him if she has NOS or not and instead of getting taken in, or getting a fine, or losing her car, she gets a date with the hot cop for tomorrow night."

Tempest made what she hoped was a modest face and shrugged. "What can I say? Guess Hot Cop has a thing for stupid girls who can't pump their own gas, but who have grease caked under their nails. And who hide their nitrous injectors under the manifold." She smirked.

"You're going to date the _cop_?" Leon asked incredulously.

"Maybe," Tempest answered and shrugged. "He never asked who Mia was, so he has no idea where I stay down here. He just has my home address. I don't think it's going to help him much. I might just lay off driving the car as much as possible for the rest of the time I'm here and not call him. And then again, I might date Hot Cop."

"Were you dressed like that when the hot cop asked you to date him?" Leon growled, finally pointing out the obvious changes in her clothing. "Is a simple date all this cop thinks he's getting?"

"The cop saw right through my act. For some reason he didn't care to call me out on it. So yeah, I think he knows that the outfit just went with the dumb act I was putting on. I didn't say I was going to do it Leo," her voice softened. She knew Leon was just worried for her. But going out with a supposed hot _traffic_ cop was the best way to piss Vince off she currently had in her arsenal and god damn it she waned to piss Vince off more than she wanted almost anything else. "I just said he offered me that option. He let me go no strings attached. Well, he promised that if I date him tomorrow night, I won't get hassled for the rest of my stay. He said if I don't, he can't make any promises. But he was grinning when he said it. He offered to take me to dinner."

"But he gave you his personal phone number," Mia chimed in, a hint of envy in her voice.

"Maybe I'll give it to you and let you call him."

"He wants the smug Miss James. Not me. I might as well not even have been there."

"Now Mia, don't pout. It wasn't you who practically had to fall out of your pants to keep your car out of impound."

"Thank god. If you think I ever would have had the audacity to unbutton my pants with a cop on his way to the window, think again."

"Coulda backfired," Vince finally broke in. "He coulda been a hard ass that woulda taken you down harder for soliciting a police officer."

"Well, you know us worthless sluts. Soliciting is about all we're good for." Tempest looked Vince over. He was drunk. _Figures_!

The crowd oohed and Dominic winced on Vince's behalf. Vince had really fucked himself over this time. He watched Vince try to think of something to say. Of course, Vince had been pulling down Corona like water since he'd arrived home. So he wasn't exactly playing with a full deck.

"So, are we done here?" Tempest asked, one corner of her mouth lifted in a sneer. She had two options. Walk away or really let him have it. She wasn't sure which one would make her feel better because all in all the whole situation had just left her feeling strange and unsettled.

Mia grabbed Tempest by the wrist. "Let's go get you a drink." She dragged Tempest out of the room and back to the kitchen, taking the decision out of her hands. "You don't need to fight with him while he's loaded. Not worth the headache."

"He's just plain not _worth_ it."

Mia made a noncommittal noise. "What do you want?"

"Something with lots and lots of gin in it."

"You better make it. I have no idea what lots and lots is."

Tempest took the bottle of liquor from Mia and scorned the glass she had been provided. She put the mouth of the bottle to her lips and pulled hard, taking three or four gulps of the liquid straight before coming up for air with a choking cough. "Forgot how potent this shit is straight up."

"You're going to make yourself sick again."

"Maybe." Tempest finally used the glass, adding ice, juice and gin before stirring the mixture and taking a tentative sip. She sighed and allowed her eyes to drift closed. _Much better_.

"So," Mia started. "You really gonna go out with that cop?"

"I think I will. Why not, really?"

"Because he's a cop and you're a street racer. You are diametrically opposed to cops. It's in your nature." Mia smiled.

"I have so many cop friends at home it's not even funny. I have nothing against cops. I have lots against being caught." Tempest grinned. "But nothing fundamentally against cops. Cops are great friends. Especially ever so slightly dirty ones. The ones that catch you doing twice the speed limit and just flash their headlights at you. And tease you about it when they find you in the bar next."

"For real?"

"Yeah. It's a small place, where I'm from. Fall in with one and then you get to know them all."

"Lucky. We pretty much try to out run them all the time. You never know down here when you'll get some gung ho ass that'll take your car just for fun."

"Thanks for telling me that now, not _before_ I stopped for Officer Hard Body."

"Well, there was really no where to run to, and your car doesn't blend into the crowd in any way."

"I guess not. Once he saw my car the first time, he could pretty much make me anywhere." Tempest looked around the kitchen. No one was paying them any attention, no one was eavesdropping. "He was as hot as I think he was, right?"

"Oh yeah," Mia grinned.

"Ok, then answer me this?"

"What?"

"If he was hot, and has a good job, and seemed really nice, nice enough to let me leave with my totally illegal car after I went totally illegal street racing with my totally illegal nitrous system and he totally knew about it all, why aren't I more excited about letting him take me out to dinner tomorrow? Why would I gladly give you his number and beg him to take you instead if someone or something could just show me how I can possibly forgive Vince for what he did?" She didn't give Mia an opportunity to answer. "But it's not like I can ever forgive him for what he did! I said this was the last straw and if I go back on it I'm just some weak bitch. Some weak bitch who likes getting treated like shit!"

"No, you're not. You're a woman in love. And love is messy and irrational and stupid and consuming and it hurts. But we do it anyway. It doesn't have to make sense, and you don't get a choice who you love or how or when, or even if you should. Sometimes you just fall in love and get taken along for the ride. Don't you think you keep letting him back in because you actually can't help it? Not because you're weak but because you just can't say no?"

"I couldn't. But now? I think I can now." Tempest looked over at Mia. "I have to. There is no future for me with him. Love is everything you said it is, and then some. But sometimes, no matter how hard you wish differently and no matter how hard you fall, sometimes love just isn't enough. And you can't make it enough no matter how hard you try."

"So you're going to date a hot cop then." A small, lopsided smile lifted one corner of Mia's mouth. The emotional trauma both Tempest and Vince were willing to go through in the name of not admitting they'd fallen for each other saddened her greatly. Tempest was correct in a lot of ways. If she wasn't willing to move, and Vince wasn't willing to admit how he felt, there was very little future for them as a couple. No matter how they felt about each other. No matter how hard they fell for each other, with the stubbornness neither was willing to put aside standing between them, they were destined to only shatter when they fell. Never to catch each other. They didn't really know each other at all and it was never going to change. Not if they weren't willing to actually share how they really felt with each other. And it seemed they weren't.

"So I'm gonna date a hot cop. A hot _traffic_ cop," Tempest agreed with small grimace. "And hope that someday after I'm home and this is all a distant memory that it stops hurting. But in the mean time I have this desire I can't say no to that's telling me I have to hurt him back somehow. And some instinct is telling me that dating the cop is the only thing I have left to do that might possibly make him feel some small measure of what he dealt to me tonight."

"What if hurting him isn't the right thing? What if that just makes it worse? What if letting it go and putting it behind you would be better?"

"That's too easy. After what he did, me just walking away is far too easy. I don't think I know how to let it go that neatly, this time."

"I sure hope you know what you're doing."

"Well, that certainly makes two of us," Tempest answered. "But frankly, I don't think I know sweet fuck all about what I'm doing. But more importantly right now, I need to decide if I'm getting drunk, or just slightly happy."

"Bad things often happen when the two of you get drunk together."

"Bad things often happen when the two of us get around each other period. I don't think we need to be drunk or not drunk. Just alive and breathing is enough."

"He wouldn't react so strongly if he didn't really care, if he wasn't really effected by everything you do."

Tempest gestured toward Mia with her half empty glass. "So says Leon. Too bad I just don't see jealousy as the same as caring." Tempest shrugged as she finished draining the beverage from her glass. She made herself a fresh drink, and with a tired smile for Mia, headed toward the living room.

That was where Vince found her some time later, after he finally got his nerve up to try and talk to her again. He started her way, walking along the wall and hoping she wouldn't see him right away. She was in the centre of a group of people. Mostly male people. He stopped within hearing distance and just listened to what they were talking about for a minute.

"How the fuck did you catch him from trailing the whole field?"

He watched as Tempest smirked. "I am the mack daddy of street racing?"

Everyone chuckled. "But yo, I mean for real. Your car just that damn fast or what?"

"Well, yeah," she sighed. As if sensing that glib quips weren't going to satisfy the curiosity of a room full of guys who had often dreamed of doing what she had done, and never got up the courage or were never given the chance, she put a hand on her hip. "Ok, so it's like this. It's a Nissan Skyline. GT-R. Got the RB26DETT. And now it's got everything to go with it. Cams, intake, exhaust, forged pistons, upgraded rings, reinforced block, heads, headers, big huge turbos, nitrous direct port kit, brakes, suspension, tires. Next to no turbo lag. You name it, this car has it." She looked around the group with a grin. "For all your racing needs, drop by The Racer's Edge and see Harry, by the way."

He grinned in his dark corner, unable to help himself. Of course she was pimping Harry. He'd put her into a dangerous situation that she'd had no business being in. But she'd enjoyed herself. So that didn't matter. Not to mention men of all ages, shapes and sizes seemed to end up her best buddies somehow. He didn't know how she did it. With the exception of the odd few they all ended up seeing her as just one of the guys instead of a girl they might like to try and get with. She blended into the male crowd that well, ninety nine times out of a hundred. She continued telling her story.

"Anyway, the reasons why I did it aren't something I wanna go into. But I just decided to press the car and my luck in a split second and once I was going it was hard to second guess myself. At the end I realized I wasn't gonna be able to take him from where I started just on the car's own merits, so I started dumping my second bottle in with what was left of the first. It was like oh, I dunno, a six hundred shot, but Jess says that it likely only upped me about five hundred. It was enough to kick it over the line first."

She jumped up on her toes a few times and put her hands in the air over her head, she made like she was shooting a basket ball from the three point line. He wondered where her actions were going.

"Three point shot, swoosh, nothin' but net." Everyone cracked up laughing.

_So cocky_. He walked up into the centre of the people gathered around her and looked around. Whatever the others saw on his face was enough to convince them to move along. He never said a word, but the crowd broke up and moved on, leaving the two of them basically alone. "Swoosh?"

"Did I do something to give you the impression I was again talking to you? Sorry if I did. It must be how huge a stupid bitch I am."

She was quite drunk, he noted. And regretted the fact he'd allowed himself to sober up in preparation for this chat. He ran a hand through his hair. "I didn't mean to say any of that. I just didn't want you to get in a fight with Dominic."

"Really?" she asked with a sneer.

"Yeah, really. Remember what happened the last time you got in a fight with Dominic? You took off out of the house and ended up buying a trailer load of shit for Harry and you had no idea who you were getting it from."

"One, for the record, Harry asked me to do that and I agreed long before the fight with Dom. And two, how on earth could you think it would be better to hear that shit from you than from Dom, who I already couldn't stand anyways?"

Ignoring the fact her point was very valid; he pushed on as if he hadn't heard it. "I didn't want you to get hurt fighting him. It's pretty obvious that you think you can take him, and not just with that razorblade tongue."

"In a crowd of people which included Leon? You thought it was gonna get that out of hand right there? That Leon and Jesse were going to let a fight between me'n Dom get physical? I don't buy that for a second. You get off on saying shit like that to me because it puts me back in my distant place!"

He hated the way she could read him so much better than he could read her. How had she figured that out? He was like a man in a cave whose flashlight had just gone out trying to figure what she was thinking, feeling, and she just knew what was in his head without an effort made at all. She put on an act like everything was fine and he never saw it was an act. She ripped his face off in a heartbeat and he didn't know for what. But he couldn't get an answer out before she pressed on.

"Well, congratulations! I'm so distantly in my place now that I don't even want to talk to you, let alone expect anything else out of you. If I'm ever dying of thirst in the desert, I don't even want you to get a fuckin' drink for me, ok? So just leave me the fuck alone!"

She pushed past him and headed down the hall into the kitchen. He sighed before pushing through the crush of bodies and finding his way to his chair in the corner. _Why am I such a stupid prick?_

A short time later, he decided that for once he shouldn't take the easy way out. He made himself get up out of his chair and go looking for her. He'd try to explain himself again and see if he could make her understand. She was loaded, which wasn't a point in his favour, but he was almost sober, so that was. It wasn't good when he tried to reason with her while he was intoxicated. A fact which had been proven time and time again.

He couldn't find her anywhere in the house. He checked everywhere. He even checked in Leon's room and Jesse's. Since both of them were still upstairs, he figured he was safe enough, but she wasn't in either room. She wasn't in his either, not that he was surprised about that. But she wasn't in either bathroom, or Letty's room, or Mia's. She wasn't in the kitchen and she wasn't in the living room. Her car was still in the driveway, so she hadn't been stupid enough to drive anywhere.

He finally gave up on his search. But he gave up on his ability to be around the party still raging in his house at the same time. He knew he wouldn't be able to go to bed while the music was still blaring and while he was still in the dark about where Tempest had gone. He decided to go and sit on the picnic table for awhile and nurse a Corona while he kicked his own ass.


	55. Of Blood and Diamond Dust

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Fifty Five – **Of Blood and Diamond Dust**

Tempest paced around the backyard agitatedly. She was busy hating herself for the very real desire to accept Vince's apology and make up with him. Knowing that she shouldn't, and that his apology hadn't been very good, nor had his reasons for doing what he'd done in the first place. But she wanted to. And she hated the desire. It felt weak. Weak, and like it was just encouraging him to do stuff like this to her again. Because she would lay down and accept it. And it wasn't the kind of example she wanted to set.

She walked from the fence along one side of the yard across to the side of the small shed on the other. As she walked she got madder and madder. What was so wrong with her that she deserved this? How was it fair to show her the man she was going to fall in love with and then make him an asshole who was in love with another woman? An asshole in love with another woman who lived three thousand miles away from her. Trying to show him what he could have if he stopped being such a moron wasn't even an option.

She got angrier and angrier. _Well fuck him and fuck fate! _Before she could think better of it, as her pacing brought her past the makeshift picnic table in the centre of the yard, she picked up one of the bottles which the revellers had left behind to mark their passage off it's surface and flung it at the side of the shed as hard as she could. It hit the side and shattered with a crash. _Shattered just like me_. Unable to resist the impulse she picked up another and hurled it at the dingy white shed with a cry. A few more went careening through the air in sparkling motion before impacting the wall of her target.

Small pieces of glass flew in all directions, while the larger pieces simply fell to the ground in a crystalline pile of glitter in the dust. Looking at the carnage brought her out of her own world. While she knew that no one would mourn the passing of a handful of Corona bottles, now she'd left a mess of broken glass in Jesse's backyard. With a sigh which fought hard to become a sob, she started across the grass toward the worst of the wreckage. She hit her knees in the dirt and started to gather the larger pieces of glass. She figured the least she could do was clear up the worst of it before going inside and pretending she had no idea what had happened to the backyard.

She picked up the first piece of jagged glass and set it on the palm of her other hand. She could only figure she hadn't been watching very carefully what she was doing, when the edge pierced her skin and red blood welled up to stain the clear edge of the glass. Fascinated by both the blood and the pain, she simply watched a moment. The urge to clench her fist around the glass rather than pull it out of her flesh was one she couldn't resist. Her fingers closed over the sharp edges and the glass bit harder into her hand. She felt as if she was screaming out loud and wasn't aware only soft whimpering was audible from her lips.

"What're you doin' T? Shit!" There was blood everywhere. Blood running down the back of her hand, blood welling up between her fingers. He'd watched her pick up the glass. When she'd stared into her hand with too much interest instead of picking up more, he'd started to get worried and had moved around from behind her, which allowed him to see her whole hand. When he'd watched blood start to drip off her skin onto the grass, he'd been jarred into action. He hit the dust on his knees in front of her. He took a hold of her clenched fist.

She didn't acknowledge him in any way. He started to pry her fingers open, one by one. She didn't resist his actions, allowing him to open her hand without a fuss. But she didn't talk to him or look at him either. She just continued to stare down into her hand. A medium sized piece of glass had originally cut her palm. Since she'd clenched a fist around it, it had also cut three of her fingers, and dug in where before it had only sliced. None of it looked bad enough for stitches, but it was also bleeding fairly heavily. He plucked the glass out of her palm, which made her whimper again, before he pulled his tank top off and balled it up into her hand, closing her fingers around it. "Squeeze it." He watched, waiting for her to listen to his instructions. She did, clearly running pretty much on autopilot. Before she could figure out what he planned, he swung her up into his arms.

"Put me down," she muttered. "I hurt my hand not my legs. I can walk."

"No. Keep squeezing." He started toward the back door. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say what I said. I was just gonna yell a bit about what you did. And then that guy stood up for you, talked like he had some right to you and I just lost it."

"He didn't say anything but lay off."

"It wasn't what he said. It was how he said it." Vince sighed. He knew it hadn't been a rational reaction. Nothing he did in reaction to anything she did was rational. She made all thoughts of rational fly out the window. He couldn't help it. She drove him crazy. And the thoughts of other guys with their hands on her made it worse. And when other guys talked to her, he started to think of them with their hands on her. "It was stupid. Haven't we already covered my stupidity about a thousand times?"

Hating him was hard work. It was exhausting. It was tiring. She didn't want to keep doing it. "Hating you is _so_ hard. I don't want to do it anymore. But how am I supposed to forgive what you said? How? Without looking like some weak, spineless bitch who likes putting up with your shit?" She was just so tired all of a sudden. After everything. The adrenaline rush of racing Dom, of facing the consequences. The adrenaline rush of getting away from the cops, from getting pulled over. The after effects of the alcohol she'd ingested. She cradled her injured hand to her chest and laid her head onto Vince's shoulder. So tired, and being angry with him was the worst of it. It made her feel crazy; constantly on edge. She couldn't keep it up.

He kissed her forehead softly. He didn't have an answer for her questions. "Come on Trouble. We need to wash that. God knows what you got in it." He carried her through the house and down the stairs, glad the kitchen had been largely empty. He set her down on the vanity beside the sink in the basement and turned on the light. "Ok, let's get a look at just how bad this is."

"It's nothing," she mumbled.

"If I know one thing about wounds—and I've had a lot of them—it's that _nothing_ doesn't bleed like that. Lemme see." He didn't wait for her to extend her limb, but took hold of her wrist and pulled her hand toward him. "Ok, come on, open your fingers."

She started to do what he asked. Then a thread of his shirt caught the edge of one of the cuts on her fingers. "Ow."

"You can't just keep holding my shirt until that heals. Come on." He fought against getting frustrated, knowing because of him, she'd had a terrible night. He started to pry her fingers open again when it became obvious she wasn't going to open them on her own. Every noise she made in pain felt like it stabbed him in the gut. The feeling got worse, not better, when he saw the damage done under the florescent light of the bathroom. When he took the cotton of his shirt away, the blood started to well up over again. "Ah shit." He daubed at the cut on her palm to wipe up some of the crimson stain spreading. "Baby, what were you thinkin'?"

"I don't know. It hurt and it was something else to think about. The more it hurt, the more it was the only thing that had to."

There had been much in his past that had hurt him. And then one day, he had simply decided that nothing else ever would. He decided that he had already taken all any one man could take, and that was that. And, for the most part, he had been right. When you refused to let anything in too far, it was easy not to let anything hurt you. She? She had the power to wound him to the centre. Nothing else got to him the way she could. Nothing got to him the way knowing she was hurting did. The things she said to him and the things she did, they could prick him. No one ever go to him anymore, unless it was to make him angry. No one until her. She had the power to hurt him, much as he tried not to let her. Knowing _she_ was hurting, either emotionally or physically, it was ten times worse. Knowing she was hurting both ways at once because of him was practically nauseating. So was the fear that blossomed when he thought about what it all meant. What it meant that she had such power over him. Then she sniffled in dejection and his focus shifted again onto taking care of her. Making her feel better was the only thing that mattered. He nuzzled in the hair on the side of her head, his lips brushing her temple. She turned her face into his touch and he was so pleased it worried him too, the pleasure over that simply capitulation. "We need to get this clean. Let's get it done so you can get some sleep. Ok?"

She nodded to the affirmative. He slid her forward off the vanity so that he could manoeuvre her damaged hand under the stream of warm water he'd started running. He kept one arm wrapped around her and used the other hand to guide hers where it had to go. She kept her face buried against his chest, her good arm looped around his neck. He moved her arm so that the worst of the damage was under the water. Blood turned the water cloudy pink and she made a pained sound in her throat. "Jesus T." The damage to her fingers was merely scratches. The slice in her palm had one part in the middle that was fairly deep. Still not deep enough for stitches, but worse than he'd thought. "I need you to stand there on your own while I wash this, ok?"

"No. We don't need to wash it anymore. Just get a band aid and it'll be fine."

"I hate to be the one to break this to you baby, but there isn't a band aid big enough to make this fine. It's gotta be washed and then it's gotta be bandaged. After it's cleaned out with some sorta disinfectant."

"That's gonna hurt," she complained.

"Yeah, it likely is. But blood infections hurt worse." He moved away from her and was glad when she stayed upright on her own, leaning on the edge of the countertop. He squirted liquid soap onto her palm and started to softly rub it around. He tried to be as gentle as he could. He knew soap was going to sting no matter how gentle he managed to be. And he knew he wasn't great at doing gentle. He also knew he had to be fairly sure he didn't leave any glass in the cut. She kept her head averted and her eyes screwed shut. He knew, by her refusal to watch him clean her wound, and the tension on her face that she was in real pain. He guessed she didn't want to see just how bad the damage was. He could also tell she was fighting tears, and he was glad she was winning. He figured if she saw the damage done, the tide might turn in that regard.

Then he went looking for peroxide and found out they only had iodine left. "Son of a," he growled under his breath. Like the soap hadn't been bad enough. He contemplated just wrapping the now cleaned cut and seeing how she did over night. But he dismissed the thought as foolish. Leaving anything in her hand to fester overnight just to avoid a little pain now was stupid. So was not preparing her for the worst. He bit back another curse. "Ok, I'm just gonna put the disinfectant on it and then we'll wrap it. But it's gonna hurt. Ok?"

"At this point, it can hardly hurt worse than it already does."

_That's what you think._ "Ok, just another second and it'll all be over." He drizzled iodine out of the bottle onto her palm. She started to bite her lip to stop from crying out. He set the bottle down and freed her lip from her teeth. She had a tenancy to bite down without regard for how much damage she was doing. The last thing he wanted was for her to do herself more injury. She finally looked up at him and the tears were welling at the bottom of her eyes. He tried not to feel guilty, but he didn't win. He got out the roll of bandages to feel useful, and started to wrap her palm, after putting a gauze pad over the worst of it. He wrapped her hand more times than he figured were strictly necessary. He was hoping it would be tight enough and thick enough to stop the bleeding. He had seen a lot of wounds in his day. So he was hoping he'd seen enough that his opinion it didn't need medical attention was the right one.

If it bled all night, or looked worse come morning, he knew he was going to have to drag her to a doctor. "What kind of painkiller can't you take when you've been drinking?"

"Tylenol. It's a blood thinner and so is alcohol."

"Ok." He dug out the Advil and made her take two. The last thing she needed was thinner blood. Enough of it was flowing just the way it was, thank you. "Let's get you to bed."

"I can take myself to the couch, Vince. I don't need your help."

"Too bad." He locked an arm under her butt and picked her up against his chest easily. She caved with a sigh and wrapped her arm around his neck, resting her head on his shoulder with her damaged hand cradled between them. He didn't stop beside the couch, but walked right into his room and set her on the bed. "You can sleep here. I'll take the couch."

"I don't need your bed. I'm fine with the couch. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have come down here in the first place."

"I don't care what you're fine with. You're hurt and tired and you can have the damn bed."

"Fine." She caved with a sigh. He was just going to keep fighting with her, and she didn't know how much of him fighting with her her head could take.

"Where's your stuff?"

"Jesse's room."

He retrieved her bags. "I'll need to check that in the morning to make sure it's not looking infected. Ok?"

"Yeah, whatever," she answered tiredly. Vince left the room and she changed into a pair of her shorts and a tank top. She shut off the light and got into the bed with a sigh. The whole room smelled like Vince. And it was so dark. And she wasn't feeling well. And she wanted to cry, but she was too numb to cry. And her hand hurt. And she didn't want to be alone. After fighting with herself for half an hour, attempting to win the argument she was having with her own mind, she conceded defeat and climbed out of the bed. She crossed the room in the dark and pulled the door open. The party upstairs was just starting to wind down, and there was still light spilling into the den from the kitchen. It hardly mattered because Vince wasn't asleep, or even trying to sleep. He was watching the small TV while lying on the couch. "V?"

He looked up with a start. "You ok?" He got up without waiting for her to answer and started toward her.

The look of concern on his face did her in. "No," she sniffled. "It's dark and my stomach hurts, and I actually _wanna_ cry but I can't and the whole place smells like you and my hand hurts and I have a headache and I just wanna sleep!"

She was so endearing, looking all rumpled and sad, that he had to really work to keep the smile off his face. He brushed some hair out of her eyes. "You wanna sit up and watch some TV with me until you feel like you might be able to go to sleep?" She nodded yes, lower lip stuck out in a childish pout that shouldn't have been so enticing on a woman who was definitely not a child. "Ok then," he took hold of her uninjured left hand and led her to the sofa. He sat in the corner and let her curl up against his side. By the end of the half hour long program he was watching, she was out like a light.

She made a terrible patient. Just like him, he mused with a chuckle. He stood and swung her up off the couch into his arms before heading toward his room for the second time. This time, he was fairly sure she'd sleep right through being put to bed. He was wrong. She became partially conscious long enough to grab a hold of his shirt and tell him in no uncertain terms he wasn't leaving her alone in the dark. He kicked his jeans off while she held onto his shirt and crawled into bed with her.

The way she melted into him and fit so perfectly to his side, her ear to his heartbeat, never failed to amaze him just a little. He would have thought himself beyond such things having the power to impress him in any way. And he'd always figured people who slept in the same bed night after night simply discovered which side they preferred for their own and slept there. If that was the case for most people, it wasn't the case for them. Even if they started off in separate places, they always ended up in the middle wrapped around each other in the end. Perhaps more surprising was the fact he liked it that way. The fact her hair smelled like comfortable and that her skin felt as much like home as his own did. The tips of her fingers resting on the ridge of his collarbone seemed to communicate the message that all was right with the world. That as long as it was her and it was him and they were being _they_ in the same place, everything was ok.

_So _why_ aren't you asking her to stay past Saturday again_? he asked himself. _Because I shouldn't have to ask her,_ he answered his own question. _She should just want to_ _if she wants to. _He tried to let that stand, tried to go to sleep. _What if she wants to, and isn't strong enough to admit it without some sign it's what you want too?_ He yawned into the fragrant cascade of her wild curls.

_Then I guess we were doomed before we even started._


	56. Of Sunny Days and Dialling Trouble

AN: Ok, so my computer broke. Again. And so I sent it away to have it fixed. Again. And five days after I got it back, the same thing broke. Again. For the fourth time. So in the last month or so I've had my computer in my possession for about five days. And I started a new job. And it's been a hellish few months. Here's an update. You know what to do.

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 56 – **Of Sunny Days and Dialling Trouble**

The alarm woke him at ten the following morning. Dom was a bit more forgiving with the hours on Thursday because they always had an all night party on Wednesday. But he wouldn't look the other way while anyone took the whole day off, and Vince knew it. It would be a vote in favour of having Tempest stick around all the time. He'd be able to wake up to her at his leisure, not leave her sleeping alone in his warm bed while he dragged himself off to slave in the garage all day. He couldn't wait to get back to his own schedule. But on the day that was ok, it would also be the day that she left. He wasn't looking forward to that day with as much enthusiasm as he should have been, and it worried him.

He wanted her to stay. Or at least he thought he did. But without some idea that it was what she wanted too, he wasn't going to go there. He wouldn't beg a woman to change her mind just over him. And that was final, he told himself with a frown as some part of his brain begged him to get down on his knees and beg. He slid out from under her, still frowning, and snagged his garage jeans off the floor. He shouldn't want her to stay. He should want her to go home so he could get back to his real life. He pulled on a 'clean' shirt before crossing back to the bed and sitting on the edge beside her. She swiped at her nose in her sleep, murmured to herself, but didn't wake up. He started to unwrap her hand, resting the back of her wrist on his thigh. He lifted the edge of the gauze and found it stuck to her wound in the middle. He tugged a little harder, wanting to see how bad things were.

"Are you trying to kill me where the glass failed?" she growled sleepily as his tugging woke her up. He was hurting her. How was she supposed to sleep through it? She tried to retrieve her hand from his leg, but he grabbed her wrist before she could do so.

"I gotta see if it looks infected or not. Suck it up." He finally broke the gauze free. It looked a remarkable amount better in the light of day. "Damn, your fingers are almost fine already."

"I've always healed quick. It's a good thing when you bust up your hands in the run of doing your job as much as I do."

He nodded, starting to rewrap the wound. "Well, I gotta get to the shop. You should sleep some more. I gotta run because Mia'll be long gone by now and I gotta get somethin' somewhere for breakfast."

Tempest sat up once her hand was released and stretched. "You want me to feed you before you go?" After waking up to someone ripping at a wound on a sensitive place like her palm, she was never going back to sleep and she knew it.

"You? You know how to cook?"

"Yeah, I know how to cook. I just don't often want to. So, do you want breakfast or not?"

"I'd say yes even if I didn't just to see you in the kitchen." He hauled her out of bed and onto her feet. "Miss 'make Mia do it' herself is gonna cook breakfast. I wish I had a camera here."

"Keep it up and you'll be getting Special K and if you're lucky, milk that isn't sour." She twisted her hair into a messy knot of curls on the back of her head and decided that for the purposes of cooking breakfast in her cousin's kitchen in what was hopefully an empty house, she was dressed enough in a tank top and shorts. They walked up the stairs, Vince following behind her one step. He was so close she could feel his breath on her neck. "Shit, you'd think they starved you around here."

"I haven't eaten since supper yesterday. That's a long time. I didn't get to snack at all last night."

"Heaven forbid." They reached the kitchen. "So, what'd ya want?"

"What can you make?"

"Depends on what's in the fridge." She pulled the door open. "So, pretty much any kind of eggs you want. Ham, sausage, bacon, everything for French toast is here. Um, yeah, I guess that's about it." She turned to Vince, who was leaning on the kitchen counter watching her. "Well?"

"I'm still amazed to see you standing in a kitchen planning to cook. I'm a little shocked."

"Ok, that's great. I don't really wanna cook. You can take me out for breakfast. I'll just go get dressed." Tempest started to walk out of the kitchen. As she walked past him, Vince grabbed her wrist.

"Not so fast Trouble. I said I was amazed, not that I was letting you off the hook. Surprise me."

"For real?"

"Yeah. Do your worst."

"I oughta give you burnt toast and runny eggs just for spite."

"But you won't, because _you_ are the kind of person to try and overachieve and surprise people that way, not underachieve and disappoint them."

"Go sit down and shut the fuck up." He had her pegged perfectly and it pissed the hell out of her. He went with a chuckle and she got to work. Twenty minutes later he was wolfing down a ham and cheese omelette with a side of bacon and toast while she was drinking light coffee with sugar and nibbling on a barely toasted piece of bread in between bites of cereal. "Is it good, or are you eating it so fast so you don't have to taste it?"

"Good," he mumbled through a mouthful of egg. "Dom's gonna be wondering where I am, again."

"How does everyone else get up so early after partying all night long?"

"Practice." He washed the last mouthful of his breakfast down with a huge gulp of coffee, which had gone lukewarm while he ate anyway. He watched Tempest drink her coffee with a frown. She'd already admitted she liked it better barely warm than hot and he just didn't get it. "What are you gonna do today?"

"Wonder why Jesse keeps leaving me home alone and be an invalid I suppose." She slurped the last of her milk and put her dishes in the sink. She added the frying pan and other utensils she'd used and ran hot water into the pan. She'd soak it, but she sure as hell wasn't doing the dishes. She had an excuse. Couldn't very well get her cut all wet and soapy in dirty dishwater. She couldn't see Vince washing up, either. Though picturing him with a frilly flowered apron on and rubber gloves up to his elbows did make her smile. She was so lost in thoughts of dressing him up like a maid service, she didn't hear him come up behind her. He reached around her to put his plate in the sink and kissed the nape of her neck.

"Thanks." Once his hand was empty, his arm wrapped around her waist. She lay hers over top of it instinctively. "You didn't poison me. Why don't you cook more often?"

"Cooking takes time. Dumping a can of something in a bowl and tossing it in the microwave doesn't."

"Suppose."

"Says someone who just has three meals appear in front of him every day and never has to worry about where they're coming from."

"I do have to put up with super happy family sharing is caring time three times a day in order to enjoy the food though."

"Aw, poor baby."

He kissed the side of her neck. "Yeah, you've seen what mornings are like for me. How enjoyable do you really think it is to put up with Miss Mia Sunshine every fuckin' day of your life?"

_But yet you'd like to wake up to Miss Mia Sunshine every single day of your life, if you had your way! _That answer was doomed to a fight, and she wasn't in the mood. "I'd kill it."

He laughed out loud at her answer. Yes, she likely would. Poor Mia wouldn't even see it coming. He rested his chin on the crown of her head. His Trouble was a real wild child. He looked out the window into the backyard. And realized he was standing in a sunny kitchen with his arms around a woman who had just cooked them a breakfast which they had eaten together, just the two of them. She was still in her PJs, and to anyone else it would look as if she was about to start the washing up. He only knew she wasn't because he knew she had a zero tolerance policy on doing dishes. It would look, to anyone who didn't know better, like they were _they_, and this was _them_. That she cooked him breakfast every day before he kissed her goodbye and headed out the door. The happy little all American family. Except that they weren't. And in a few days, there wouldn't be a them to even consider. _It's time for work. _"You headed down to the shop today, or what?"

"Imagine I'll give Dominic a day to get over what I did."

"A day won't come close to time enough for Dominic to get over what you did." _Not by half_. He nuzzled in the hair at her temple, unable to resist. "But don't worry about Dominic. I've got you covered there."

"I don't like your idea of having me covered from Dom, thanks all the same." She wished she hadn't said it once she had. She didn't want to end the peaceful interlude they were enjoying. It was so rare for them to just be together without a fight or some other drama filled occurrence. To try and show him she hadn't said it to start a fight, she turned her head to the side and kissed his cheek. "But you should likely go down there before he comes home looking for you and the three of us end up in a screaming match in the kitchen."

"Ok. Should I send Jesse home to be with you?"

She shrugged. "Only if he's not busy. I could easily sign myself up for a day of watching TV or reading. I'm feeling lazy."

"Don't say stuff like that to me when I'm trying to get out the door to go work in the stupid shop."

"Why not?"

"Because if I hadn't told Dominic that I'd show up every day this week, I'd be free to drag you back down stairs and give you a good reason to stay in bed and be lazy."

"You presume an awful lot for a person that I shouldn't even be speaking to." She couldn't let him think that she would merrily hop back in bed with him after what had been said last night. No matter how well they were getting along now.

"I presume you wouldn't need to do any talking at all. Unless it was to say my name in a suitably impressed manner. Probably with 'oh' in front of it." Just thinking of how she said his name when he was impressing her made the caveman desire to drag her down the stairs kick into overdrive. That, and made certain parts of his body start to sit up and take notice.

She laughed in spite of herself. He was so full of himself. "Oh really?"

"Let's go find out." He took her earlobe between his teeth and bit down softly, sliding a hand under her tank top to touch her bare stomach, trailing his fingers from one side to the other. He was gratified when her head tipped to the side to allow him easier access and her body fit tighter into his. The touch of rear against his fly had him sucking in a quick breath. He bit her neck gently in answer.

He was making it hard to hold onto her resolve. "You have work. And I have lounging. So go." She pulled away reluctantly. The time had to come where she found a little self restraint. And after yesterday night, there was truly no time like the present.

"You're no fun."

"I don't want Dominic to have another reason to be pissed off at me. So go do the job you said you'd do."

"Fine. Don't have some of the best sex you've ever had with me this morning. See if I care." He let her go with a sigh. "It's your loss."

"I'll cry about it later. Really."

He pulled a sarcastic face at her in answer. "I guess I'll go then."

"You likely should."

"Really, you shouldn't be alone right now. I'll just call them and tell them I'm staying home to keep an eye on you. You might get a fever from infection any time now." He cupped her cheek with his palm as if checking her temperature. "I should really check you for fever frequently in a variety of bodily locations to make sure we catch it early."

"I've cut myself much worse than this before and I distinctly remember you pouring iodine on me last night. I think we're safe. Go to work."

"Fine, I'm going." He made no move to leave the kitchen.

"You look it too," she answered with a sarcastic tone. With a backward look at her, trying to look like a sad puppy, he headed for the door. She watched him go with a happy wave. He had it coming. When she finally heard his car start a few moments later, and back down the driveway, she let out the breath she hadn't even realized she'd been holding in. She had seriously doubted her ability not to give into his request and let him take her downstairs.

When lunch time came, she found herself incredibly bored alone in the house. She didn't know if Jesse hadn't come back because he was mad at her, thinking she had done more than sleep in Vince's bed last night after saying she wasn't going there anymore or he was just busy with some car. She looked around the empty house. On a whim, she decided to take her chances and go find Jesse in the shop. If Dom started shit, for once she'd just be the bigger person and walk away. _Good luck with that. _She stuck her tongue out at herself.

She drove to the shop and noted everyone's cars present and quite a few customer vehicles as well. She was reassured to know that Jesse hadn't come to find her because he was too busy, not because he was too upset with her. She pushed into the shop and gave her eyes a few moments to adjust to the light, which was dimmer inside than under the hot Californian sun. She found Jesse under a red car, doing something to the transmission. He was covered from head to toe in 80w90 from the transmission and she knew without getting any closer to him that he stank. Her nose wrinkled at just the thought of the stench of gear oil. Nothing stank worse. Nothing filled an entire shop with stink like used gear oil. Burning coolant was awful, but used gear oil was worse.

Her gaze roved around the room, finding Leon next. He was pinning wires on a fuse panel on a late model Grand Am. He looked none too happy about it either. She figured after she said hello to Jesse she'd go offer Leon a hand. Chances were, no matter what issue he was trying to solve, she'd seen it done at least once before. If she hadn't fixed it herself. She didn't see Dom anywhere, which was just a bonus, as far as she was concerned, and Letty was occupied changing the oil of yet another car in her bay. She finally scanned to the last corner of the room and found Vince. And the blond who had her hand on his muscled bicep while she grinned vapidly up at him. And he was lapping it up with a cheerful grin back at her, allowing her hands to stay on his person.

_Ok, fuck this. I'm so outta here_. She walked back out of the shop and right back over to her car before starting it and leaving the lot. She picked up her cell phone with a sigh and looked at it. Before she could change her mind she dialled in the unfamiliar area code and phone number.


	57. Of Hell and Handbags

AN: I know nothing at all about the US/Californian law enforcement system. I've ad libbed the things I didn't know in the most logical manner I could that still suited the story. I mostly don't own Jim. I'm just taking him out to play for awhile. I'll return him in (mostly) the same shape as I found him when I'm done. I guess that about covers it. Ya'll know what to do.

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Fifty Seven – **Of Hell and Handbags**

When he heard the door open seconds after it had just closed, Vince glanced over that way. The back which retreated out the door had been screened from view by a large amount of curly hair which had looked black in the dim light. _Son of a bitch! _He wasn't even doing anything wrong. The girl was actually an old friend of his, and there was nothing between them. Which, had Tempest not over reacted out of hand and ran off, he would have explained to her before he introduced her to Bryce's sister, Amanda. But if he didn't want to explain himself to Amanda, in regards to why he now had to run off on her and chase down a Nissan Skyline at utterly ridiculous speeds, there was nothing he could do.

He knew he hadn't given Tempest many reasons to trust him in the past. And he knew that originally he had gotten off on her possessiveness. But jealousy wasn't an emotion born of trust or a healthy relationship and he saw that quite clearly now. Though why things not being healthy in their psuedorelationship surprised him in any way he had no idea. She was so sure he was out to get with every girl who moved other than her that she wouldn't even give him a chance to explain himself when she saw him so much as talking to another girl.

"Vince, you haven't heard I word I've said since that other girl walked in and then walked out again!" Amanda teased gently. "You into her or something?"

"Or something," he muttered.

"Oh! That was her then? This girl of Jesse's who beat Dom down last night?" She didn't wait on his answer, but assumed she was correct, turning to look at the now closed door. "She was pretty. Not at all what I was expecting when I heard some strange relative of Jesse's up and beat Dom down in the street out of nowhere. She looked really girly, but not in that normal race girl, girly way. Why didn't she stick around?"

Vince sighed. "Because she thought you were flirting with me and that I was doin' it back."

"Oh." Her head cocked to the side in confusion. "Oh! You're dating Jesse's cousin?" A wide smile showed that the thought of this event pleased her.

"Or something," he answered, frowning.

"Oh V. You're playing around with Jesse's baby cousin?"

"No!" He shook his head. "Sorta. Maybe. I don't know. She's goin' home in a few days anyway."

"Go after her and explain the situation. You can't let her think you were trying to pick me up. You weren't."

"I know that, and you know that. But her? She won't buy that for a second. She'll just think that I saw her seein' us and brushed you off to go after her. Because right now I'll guarantee you she thinks you're just some racer chaser. Besides that, I'd never catch her. You haven't seen crazy drivin' until you've seen her behind the wheel of that car of hers. Her'n Jesse'n Leon built the thing from the ground up. I'd never catch her." It pained him to admit it, but he figured it was true. Well, at least until she got lost. Then he'd catch her. If she didn't manage to lose him in the mean time.

"Well call her. You must have her number."

"I'll explain things to her tonight Amanda. Don't sweat it. She'll be at the house for supper. It'll give her a chance to calm down." He watched as Amanda frowned. "Don't start. I get it. I'll explain it to her before dinner, ok?"

Driving down the highway, listening to the phone ring on the other end of the connection was making her nervous. She'd never done anything like this before in her life. She decided she should hang up just as the call was answered.

"Hello," a sleepy male voice came across the line.

"Shit, I'm sorry. Did I wake you? We never really discussed when I should call, just that I should if I found myself free, and I do, so I did. And I'm rambling, so just tell me to shut up already."

"Never," this reply was delivered with a chuckle. "When pretty girls who tend to walk about falling out of their pants phone me while I'm in bed naked I never tell them to shut up."

"I see." She really didn't know how to respond to that. His answering laugh informed her he was aware of her discomfort.

"So, you found yourself with some free time then?"

"My calendar seems to be wide open."

"Well, I was thinking dinner, but if you're not doing anything right now, I have to go to an awards banquet and I have no one to escort. Why don't you come with me? I could pick you up in an hour. We could do the dinner thing afterward."

She had no desire to date the hot cop, hot as he was. But she wanted to show Vince he wasn't the only one who could find hot members of the opposite sex to date. "Ok, but I'll meet you someplace."

"Oh come on now darlin'. I'm a cop. You can tell me where to pick you up."

_Oh no I can't_. "I'd rather just meet you someplace."

"Ok, fine. There's a coffee shop down the street from my place. Meet me there. The thing is going to be fairly formal."

"Fairly?"

"Ok, very. Is that a problem? You don't have to come."

_Little black dress, here I come, again_. "It's not a problem. So I'll meet you there for two?"

"Yeah, that's perfect." He gave her the address and name of the coffee place before she let him go. An hour wasn't much time to get ready and get a cab. All while hoping against hope Vince wasn't busily leaving the garage to find her to make up some story about how it wasn't anything and she was just a girl and he was just trying to talk her into more things for her car than she was strictly looking to buy.

She raced through getting her hair done, and minimal make up on before she slid into her dress. And that was about when she realized that she had no where to put her money, cards, keys, phone, or lip gloss. There was no convenient person she knew with pockets going on this date with her. She normally would have made one of the guys carry her stuff. With a flash of inspiration she darted upstairs to the phone in the hall. The number to Mia's little lunch counter was programmed into the phone. She picked it up and dialled, glad she was again mostly talking to Mia.

Mia answered on the first ring. "Hello."

"Mia, its Tempest."

"Is everything ok?" Mia went straight into 'what's wrong' mode. She clearly couldn't think of any other reason why Tempest would be calling her in the middle of the day. Either that, or she was use to getting calls about emergencies from the house in the middle of the day. Tempest figured that either was just as likely as the next.

"Well, yes and no. I decided to go out with that guy, and he wants me to go to some sort of award banquet with him this afternoon, so I said I would. But I have nothing to carry my phone and the rest of my shit in when I wear this dress."

"You're wearing the little black dress you wore out with Vince out with some other guy? What did he do?"

"Nothing. I only met him on the side of the road for five minutes. What could he have done?"

"I meant Vince. I got the feeling you weren't even going to call the cop back, and now you're not only going out with him, you're going out with him in the very minimal black dress."

"I just think, given the state of affairs of everything here, that I should keep my options open," Tempest answered tightly. "Do you know what I can do with my shit or not?"

"There's a hanger of handbags in my closet. Help yourself. But I expect all the details. You can come to the café for lunch tomorrow and fill me in. Deal?"

"A handbag. That's why women own them!"

It was clear the idea of a purse simply hadn't occurred to Tempest, and it made Mia laugh. "Yes, that's why we own them. If I don't see you before then, lunch, tomorrow."

"Ok, ok. Lunch tomorrow. Later." She hung up before Mia could say anything else. She picked a bag, shoved her stuff in it, wrote a note for Jesse and called a cab. She just made it to the address she'd been given on time, rushing across the sidewalk as fast as she could in her heeled boots. She's opted out of the sandals for this event, feeling her knee high boots still on loan from Mia presented a more adult image. Her act on the side of the highway the night before was still fresh in her mind. Whether he'd known it was an act or not, Officer Street had seen a great deal of her body, and underthings, for someone she'd just met.

She saw him right away. He was seated at a table, sipping a coffee of some description. He was hard to miss, given he was dressed up in his dress blue uniform. He stood when he noticed her, and took away her chance to leave before hand and come to her senses, calling Jesse from the sidewalk. He crossed to her side, letting a grin a mile wide come over his face.

"Darlin' the whole fallin' out of your clothes thing didn't suit you half as well as this."

She fought a blush. "Yeah, about that." She peeked up at him from under her lashes. "I was sort of hoping that all of me falling out of my clothes like that would cause all of your desire to give me a ticket to fall out of your head."

"I had guessed." He took her elbow and started to walk her out onto the street. "So, tell me. The car. Is it legal or not?"

She shrugged. "I dunno. It is where it comes from. Down here, I really have no idea. The desire to take it across country and show it off to my cousin won out over finding out if it was legal or not. If I knew for sure it wasn't, I wouldn't have taken it."

"So, you just shoved your head into the sand and drove it here anyway." He chuckled.

"Something like that, yeah. I doubt it would pass California emissions. I doubt it ever would have. But it really wouldn't now."

"And why's that?"

"You can't turn around and bust me for this after the fact, can you?" She asked, her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"No. And I don't want to. I'm just curious. Cars are something I know nothing about." He looked down at her, laughter dancing in his eyes. "Oh, but wait! I forgot. Neither do you."

"That's right." She smirked

"I'm still curious. Why wouldn't the car pass smog?"

"Well, it's got no catalytic converter. It's chipped to run really rich to help prevent detonation when it's in boost, and it has a really aggressive exhaust profile on the cam shafts to make sure it has as little turbo lag as possible and to make the nitrous injection system as efficient as possible. All of that means quite a bit of unburned fuel hits the exhaust and leaves the tailpipe under normal street driving conditions."

He opened the door of a black Blazer and helped her in. He crossed to the driver's side and got in, starting the truck. "So you do have NOS."

"So I do have a nitrous system, yes."

"Why couldn't I find it?"

"Well, I'll tell you that you couldn't find the under hood components because they're hidden under the intake manifold. I can't give you all my secrets." She smirked in his direction. _Are you flirting with the hot cop? Are you well?_

He smiled slightly at her, showing he got the inflection of her words. "How do you know so much about cars?"

"Um," she hesitated. She was about to contradict everything she'd told him the evening previous. "I'm a mechanic."

"Yeah," he answered, glancing over at her before turning his eyes back to the road. "I had figured."

"How'd you figure?"

"The grease under the nails. The 'I know more about this than you do and the fact amuses me greatly' attitude. The fake way you made out like you couldn't find the release for the hood."

"Ok, I really couldn't find the release for the hood. I've only owned the car about two months and it was in the body shop for a month of it."

"How did it get so customized in such a short about of time?"

"My cousin works for a friend of his at a performance shop and Jesse, Leon and I built the engine when I got here."

"What about the inside? It didn't come that way, did it?"

"No," Tempest heard her voice tighten. "It didn't. It was done as a favour to me by another one of Jesse's friends."

"And you'd rather not talk about it, or the friend who did it." He offered with a smile. He caught the incredulous look she was sending him. "I'm a cop darlin'. Reading people is part of the job."

It forced a laugh out of her. "And the interior of the car and how it got that way is a subject I would rather not talk about."

"Fair enough. So, in all honesty, you were street racing last night, weren't you?"

"You get right to the point, don't you Officer Street?" she asked on a light laugh.

"Please, if you're going with me to my boring annual banquet, you get to call me Jim. And in all honesty, I'm fascinated by the whole idea of street racing. So many kids spending every cent they make on their car, just for a few minutes of glory. Glory they only get around the people who are also part of their scene. I don't get it."

"You don't have a hobby that costs money?"

"Yes, but nothing like making a Honda into a race car."

She laughed. "You can't make a Honda into a race car. It doesn't matter how much money you have. But I know what you mean. Yes, I was racing last night. I won last night, as a matter of fact. I won a race I wasn't even in." She filled him in on what she'd done. She left off the part which had come after, simply because she didn't want Vince and what he'd said to intrude on the rest of her day.

"Even I've heard of Dominic Toretto. You were fast enough to beat him?"

"It was luck and my car, mostly. That and surprise. He never really figured me for able to catch him, let alone sneak out front."

"All that and modest too. You're gonna spoil me, darlin'."

"Don't count on it."

He laughed in answer. She was something else. A girl that looked like her in L.A. likely would have turned into some kind of stuck up snob ages ago. Lord knew he'd dated enough of them. But not Miss Tempest James from nowhere. She was so direct. She didn't try to impress by exaggerating what she said, or try to play herself up. She was a mechanic, plain and simple. She was wearing a dress fit to make most guys sit up and take note, but he was willing to bet she'd pay good money for a tank top and jeans right about now. "So, what happened to your hand?"

His question made her remember the cut on her palm, still bandaged despite the fact it was really much better already. "I cut myself on glass last night. Stupid, drunken error."

"Is that part of the whole car racing 'thing'? Getting drunk afterward?"

"Depends on who you are I guess. It's part of Jesse's idea what should happen. His team always has a party after the fact."

They arrived at the downtown hotel where his banquet was and he parked the truck in the off street parking. He had to rush around the nose to help her down out of the four by four before she could clamber down on her own.


	58. Of Devil's Bargains and Debts Repaid

AN: Yada yada yada...By now we all know the drill, don't we? Somewhere there is a button. Click said button. Tell the stormy one something in the box. Not so hard :) I like Jim. I'm sad this is the last we're going to see of him :'( Course, I'm willing to bet so is Miss Tempest, as with him goes her chance to meet a nice normal guy. His extreme hotness also isn't so bad :D. Anywho...Onward.

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Fifty Eight – **Of Devil's Bargains and Debts Repaid**

When they walked into the large conference room set up for the banquet, Tempest wanted to turn right back around and leave again. The room was full of cops in their dress uniforms. She was nervous. She might have told Mia she didn't have anything against law enforcement. And she might even have really meant it. But that didn't mean so many of them in once place didn't make her edgy. "There sure are a lot of you."

"Well, this is Los Angeles Darlin'. It takes a lot of us." He caught her hand in the crook of his elbow and started to walk toward his partner and his date for the afternoon. Hellos and introductions were exchanged all around before he helped Tempest into her chair. He had to guess she was feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all. She excused herself to go to the bathroom and he pointed out the way. His partner's date went with her. "Well?"

"I owe you twenty bucks man. She is cute. She looks kinda familiar."

"She should."

"Why's that?"

"She's the racer girl we pulled over last night. The one I told you about."

"No shit! Really? She actually called you?"

"She actually called me."

"I fuckin' gave you that one. I was gonna do it myself and then I let you take it. The one time the whole hot girl traffic stop thing actually worked instead of just being some cop fantasy and I gave it to you."

Jim grinned. "Yeah. Thanks."

The ladies returned to the table and they stopped talking in such a male locker room way.

By an hour into the event, Tempest was wishing that she'd stayed at home. She didn't know anyone, and the speeches were all so dry. And none of it affected her, because she wasn't a citizen of L.A. "You seriously need to tell me if you like any of the people on the stage or in this room," she whispered to Jim.

"And why's that?"

"Because I'm about to start entertaining myself by mocking them and their clothes, and I don't want to offend you."

His snort of laughter was loud enough to draw the attention of some of the people sitting at the other tables around them. "Oh please, mock away. By all means. If you can make this entertaining, I won't be offended."

His words turned her personal mission to stop being bored into a challenge to make him laugh out loud in front of all his coworkers at what was supposed to be a serious event. "And she should try to take that nose back to whoever gave it to her because it clearly wasn't nature. It's as fake as her plastic boobs."

He laughed out loud, one quick chuckle before he controlled himself. "You're right, and _that_ is the trophy wife of the chief of police."

"Oops, my bad." She grinned back at him.

"Yes you are. But I'm enjoying it anyway." He glanced at the stage. "Oh, here comes our chief. This should be good." The chief took the mic and looked out over the crowd. He made a speech about the great work being done by the police men and woman of the city.

By the time the chief was done speaking, he had announced a long list of people getting promotions within the department. Included in the list were Jim and his partner, who had just found out that after five years of patrol duty and five applications, they had finally been accepted onto SWAT. As the party broke up, it was clear that they had been waiting for the chance for a long time.

"We've gotta go get some beers to celebrate!" Jim's partner announced as they milled around while people started to pack up and leave.

"Well, we're going to dinner. But maybe after."

"No, you should go with your friends!" Tempest broke in. "Sounds like this is kinda a big deal. You should go with them." It didn't seem fair to keep him away from his friends after such an important announcement.

"Don't be silly! They'll be 'gettin' a beer' for the rest of the night, darlin'."

"He's right. Go eat, help Jim change," he winked. "Meet us after."

"Jim can change without any help, and will be doing so _before_ dinner." Jim broke in with a grin. He was use to his partner's much cruder attitude. But he also knew that for all her artlessness, for some reason his date couldn't shrug off comments that implied there would be something sexual between them so easily. "I can't wait to get outta this uniform." He started to lead her toward the elevator to the car park. "We'll catch you guys later, at the usual place." He called back over his shoulder. They walked onto the elevator when it opened. "That wasn't so bad. Only because some of the things you observed about those people made me think I was gonna burst out laughing in the middle of some speech."

"I never did the whole sitting quietly thing very good. I always gotta find some way to amuse myself."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. My cousin has ADD, and maybe so do I, a little." They reached the truck and again, Jim helped her in and shut the door behind her before going to his own side. They drove back to his place.

"You can come in. I promise you're safe from helping me change." He grinned.

"Ok." She got out of the truck and followed him to the front door. After he got the door unlocked and pushed it open, they were greeted by a huge German shepherd, which Jim fawned over, and the dog returned the favour. "You have a dog!"

"Yeah. He's friendly."

"Hey buddy," Tempest crooned to the dog, who came over and sniffed her hands before sniffing her knees. She scratched him behind the ears. "I bet my dress still smells a bit like my dog, doesn't it?" she continued, still talking in a baby voice to the huge sable dog. He sat in front of her and looked into her face, panting in that way dogs had which looked like a canine smile.

"He likes you. He can keep you entertained while I get changed. Then we'll go."

"Ok, no hurry."

A short while later Jim came out of what she assumed was his bedroom. He had changed into a black buttoned dress shirt and black slacks. "Ok, you ready?" He'd bet she was now covered in German Shepherd fur. She was sat on the floor, the dog on his back beside her, getting a tummy rub with an impressively happy look on his face. He was also willing to bet she didn't care about the hairs on her dress, which was unusual coming from a woman dressed like her. Unusual and impressive.

"Sure. Where are we going?"

"To dinner." He offered a hand to help her back up onto her feet.

She took it and stood up with a graceful movement. "Why do I only meet funny guys? You're a funny guy," she sassed back sarcastically.

"If I tell you the name, are you likely to know of the place then?" he answered back with a smile. He looked into her face. The petulant, thwarted look there was answer enough. "I thought not. Come on, we'll go, we'll eat, we'll go to the bar and have a few rounds to celebrate my big promotion."

"I'm just here to keep my ass outta a sling," she answered with a smirk.

"Well, let me see if I can make it worth your while."

"You better. You got me into a dress. You owe me. Big."

"It sounds like someone has already forgotten driving off in her in all likelihood illegal vehicle last night at one am."

"Sounds like _someone_ has already forgotten ogling my ass last night before letting me go on the side of the road. Sounds like someone has already forgotten bribing me to get this date while on the side of the road last night. All while staring at my goodies."

His smile was that of a caught bad boy with no concern for the fact he'd been busted. "Call it even?"

"Deal."

He drove them to a nice restaurant, where they ate, and talked over their meal. They then got back into the truck and he drove them to the bar where his cop friends were already celebrating their various promotions and commendations. Jim was welcomed with a rousing cheer and welcomed into the fold. Tempest was welcomed just as warmly, and without question into their midst. They got drinks, and mingled for the first while they were there. Once she had a drink in her and another in her hand, she sat on a bar stool and looked around the room. Jim was shooting darts with his partner.

He was very hot, and very nice. And she didn't feel a thing beyond appreciation he was so hot when she looked at him. And she really wished that wasn't so true. Because she felt like she would do anything to just be able to look at him and see a potential date instead of a guy she thought would make a really great friend. But she wasn't about to tell him that. She was going home in a few days anyway, and Jim would never miss her. One date wasn't enough to get to know someone well enough to miss them or not. She looked around the room and when she finally got around to looking to her left, she found Jim there, staring at her intently. How the hell had he gotten there, and so close, without her noticing?

"Enjoying yourself? Need another drink?" he asked her.

He was aware he'd surprised her. The knowledge of it twinkled in his eyes. But paybacks were a bitch. "Sure, I'd love another." Once her third drink was in her hand she looked at him with a smirk. "So, officer, when you requested my driver's licence last evening, and I surrendered it with a minimal fight, did you happen to check out the date of birth on said licence?"

"Not so much. I was quite fascinated with the way your pants were managing to stay up while they were already half undone. Thinking about the fact that half the work of getting you out of them was already done took precedence over actually looking at your licence. Why?"

"I'm just sitting here wondering how much trouble you can get in for being the SWAT cop who took the nineteen year old chick to the bar and bought her drinks."

Jim choked just slightly on his beer. He cleared his throat when he was done coughing and schooled his face to look calm—practically expressionless. He drained what was left of his current drink and calmly ordered another one before continuing. "Excuse me. I couldn't have heard you right. You're how old?"

"Nineteen. You didn't catch that on my licence then?"

"No." Once he had the bottle in his hand he drained half of it. "Nineteen huh?"

"Yeah," she answered, trying to sound rueful and contrite. She failed. She drained her drink and motioned for another. "If it makes you feel better, the legal age where I live is nineteen and I've been in bars and drunk before."

"Strangely, no that doesn't make me feel better." He shrugged. "What's done is done. Just don't tell my friends you're so young. I'll never live it down."

"How old do I look?"

"I never spent too much time thinking about it. But over twenty one comes to mind."

"I'm very close to twenty if that helps." She smirked.

"A little. Not really." His bad boy smile returned, as if to say 'what's done is done.' "Wanna join me in a game of darts?"

"Sure."

By the time one am rolled around, they were ready to leave. Jim helped her into the truck and got in himself. He started the vehicle and rolled out. "Have a good time? Potentially getting me in huge trouble?" The look on his face and tone of his voice took the menace out of the words. She was way more mature than the average nineteen year old of his acquaintance. If he'd realized how young she was beforehand he never would have asked her out. No matter how hot she'd looked falling out of her clothes on the side of the road. He still would have let her go. Still would have gotten off on their word play that night. But it never would have gone further had he known how young she was before he got to know her. But now, despite her age, if he wasn't sure she wasn't even remotely into him, he _would_ think about asking her out for a second date and fuck the age difference. Taking a girl on a second date was something he rarely did. Let alone with someone eight years his junior.

"I did have a nice time. Your cop friends are pretty cool. For cops."

"You gonna let me drive you home this time? Or should I drop you off someplace where you can call a cab?" The question was good naturedly sarcastic.

"Oh, just take me home. I have some dirt on you now so we should be safe. After all, it wouldn't do for it to get out that Officer Street, newly promoted to SWAT, spent his first night in that lofty role trying to get a minor loaded in a bar."

He pulled a face at her taunt. "So, why'd you agree to come out with me in the first place?"

She was caught off guard by his question. What'd he mean, why? "I don't follow you."

"Well, I just." He cut himself off. "There's no chemistry here is there?" He continued on without letting her answer. "I mean, there's nothing between us at all. And since normally there would be, at least on my end, I just assumed it was because you're into someone else. Which makes me wonder why you agreed to come out with me in the first place."

She sighed. "There was someone else. But nothing exclusive. We were only seeing each other on and off. It wasn't permanent and it wasn't serious. So I decided to keep my options open. You were funny last night, and good looking and I figured it was worth a shot. I couldn't have guessed then that all there would be a chance for was friendship. Nice lookin' guy with a good job, great sense of humour. I'da been crazy not to hit the chance. But it's no good." She sighed. _No good at all. _She momentarily wanted to cry. _But why the fuck not?_

The car fell into silence until they stopped in front of the white house in Echo Park. "That other guy, I sure hope he's worth all the trouble you're putting yourself through."

"Not in the least. Which is why I'm done putting myself through any trouble over him." She lifted one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. "I wish there could have been something here. Maybe if I'd met you first, in a different life. I had fun tonight. I wish it could be more. But it wouldn't be right to pretend it could be more. But I really wish it could be."

"Why do I get the feeling you really mean that?"

"Oh, do I ever."

"You're not in some trouble here, are you?" The cop in him went into overdrive.

"Nothing I can't handle." The fact that he didn't know about Dominic and her shit with him hit her at that moment and she realized what he was getting at. "He doesn't hit me, if that's what you're getting at."

"There can be worse things than being hit. There are other kinds of trouble that girls can end up in from the boys they date."

"You implying I might get myself knocked up?" she asked with a smirk. She knew what he was getting at. She just found the thought of it distasteful to her. She knew Vince well enough now to know that while he might get rough with her, it would be with her full co-operation.

It made a burst of laughter escape him. She was so blunt. "No. Implying there are ways that a guy can talk and stand and walk around a girl that are just as intimidating as getting an actual back hand to the mouth. Especially big guys."

"I believe that one hundred percent. But my cousin and Leon—his best friend—wouldn't stand for that. Not even if V was that kind of guy. Which he isn't. His friend Bryce told me that he'd never treat me like that, and the way Bryce said it, he certainly has good reason to think it's true. I'm quite safe from everything but myself."

"You still have my number. If you ever need anything, or find yourself in trouble, call me. Any time."

"I will. And thanks. For the whole not takin' my car thing, and the date, and the offer." She grinned.

"Thank you for the whole intriguing view on the side of the road thing, and making my boring function bearable with your running catty commentary, and not turning me in as being the cop who buys liquor for minors."

"Well, you're welcome." She moved to get out of the car. She was slightly surprised when he grabbed her wrist lightly.

"Listen," he had no idea what was possessing him but he couldn't let her go without saying it. "If you ever find yourself back in California in that different life, where whoever this guy is doesn't exist, make sure you still have my number, aye?"

"Sure," she smiled back over her shoulder at him slightly sadly. She'd never be back, and if a life without Vince mattering in it was within her grasp, she'd be living there already. "I'll put it right into my cell phone as soon as I'm inside."

He nodded. "Good. Goodbye Tempest."

"Goodbye Jim." A serious slight frown came over her face. "Take care of yourself. And be careful. It's dangerous, this new job you took on, isn't it?"

"No more so than what I'm doing now. Just different. But I'm always careful. Someone's gotta make it home to feed and walk the dog." He grinned.

"Well, if anything ever happens where you can't take care of the dog, send him my way. He's a sweetheart."

"You've ruined him for the work I got him for, no doubt. Spoiled into thinking every stranger he meets wants to rub his tummy and talk nonsense to him."

"Maybe." She finally found her feet on the cement sidewalk at the curb of the house. She slammed the door closed and waved goodbye into the window before she started up the driveway and around to the back door which Mia had assured her she would leave unlocked. Before she could process what was happening—or scream, for that matter—she found herself tossed into the dark corner of the house where the porch stuck out farther than the kitchen wall. A muscled arm protected the small of her back at the same time as a large hand cupped the back of her head, stopping her head from cracking into the wall of the house. The net result was that she was unharmed but scared and breathing heavily from the shock.


	59. Of Smouldering Embers and Fanning Flames

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Fifty Nine – **Of smouldering Embers and Fanning the Flames**

He hadn't really intended to grab her like that. Just to have it out with her outside where there was less chance of them waking the whole house with the fight they were about to have. Then he watched her talk to the other man in his truck. _The cop_. The cop who drove a GMC Jimmy like some normal man. And watched him grab her wrist and say something to her with that earnest look on his face. And saw her answer with a serious, concerned look on her own. And them having serious, concerned conversations with each other made him so angry he wanted to start punching the walls of the house. So when she walked past where he stood, he threw her into the dark shadows in the corner where no one could see them. He was glad he at least had the presence of mind to make sure she wasn't injured in the move. "Did you let him put his hands on you?" He growled the question without thinking how it would sound. How wrapped up in her it would make him look. How, despite his distaste for her uncalled for jealous reaction, he wasn't above a little of his own irrational jealousy.

"What the fuck?" she growled back, sure of who she was dealing with at last.

"Well?" he pushed, crowding her further into the lee of the porch. "Did you let him touch you?" He didn't give her time to answer, just leaned down and crushed his lips to hers with a snarl. Imagining 'hot cop'—as Mia had spent the night calling the other man—with his hands on Tempest had made sure he spent the night ready to snap something in half. He kissed her hard, pushing his tongue into her mouth as his hands roamed her body. He felt her try to resist him, and was gratified when she couldn't.

Her anger at herself for being unable to roust any interest in herself for Jim made her push back against the obstacle in her path. Namely Vince. She tangled her hands in his hair equally roughly and kissed him back. The emotions involved were raw and angry. She thought that perhaps in that moment she actually hated him for being able to make her desire him when she knew she shouldn't and when she couldn't desire a good man who she should. For smiling at the little blonde like he was a normal, happy guy. For being nice to that blonde in ways he wouldn't be nice to her.

When she got rough with him, like _she_ was infuriated with _him_, it pushed him farther into the red haze of his jealous anger that she went out with another man, gave another man a chance to touch her body, kiss the lips he was currently nipping harder than he normally would have thought to do. The hand he had cushioning the back of her head closed around a handful of her hair, which he used to drag her head back, exposing the arch of her neck. He bit her hard, and the hand he still had pressed to the small of her back moved down to grab her ass and pull her closer to him. He bit her neck again and she whimpered, her hands still tangled in his hair. He swiped his tongue over the delicate area at the base of her neck where her pulse throbbed rapidly, beating out a staccato rhythm under her skin.

She used his hair as leverage and tipped his head down and to the side, biting the side of his neck hard enough to bruise before moving along to bite at his earlobe. She was wildly angry, and so was he. It was going to be anyone's best guess how it ended. His best guess was that there was about to be a change of venue. The scuffle was about to get really physical and he wasn't taking it there in the backyard. He started to walk backwards, dragging her with him while still kissing her and nipping at her neck and earlobes. Once they were in the house and the back door was closed behind them, he was shocked to find himself pushed forcefully into the wall beside the opening of the basement stairs by a whipcord storm in high heels. She kissed him hard and he grabbed her ass, pulling her flush against his body as he kissed her back.

They were both irate, and it pissed her off worse. What right did he have to be mad at her? She caught him flirting with the blond whore right there in front of everyone and all of a sudden she didn't have the right to check out his competition? Fuck him and fuck the double standard. Her hands pushed up under his tank and her nails started to score across the heavy muscles of his stomach. She was gratified when he hissed out a shocked breath. Her nails bit into his sides next, the sensations they caused biting somewhere between pain and pleasure.

The fact that her outfit was one piece and he couldn't get his hands around her ribcage on her bare skin frustrated him to no end. The dress had to go, but he didn't need to be told it wasn't going anywhere in the dining room. How to get them down the stairs without killing either of them? He didn't want to let her go long enough to walk down the stairs in case she came to her senses long enough to change her mind about the conclusion of their night. He felt the weight of her departure pressing in on him. She was leaving in such a short amount of time and she'd spent a whole night of that time out with some other man. Some loser cop. All the time she had left belonged to him. He needed it all to try and get her out of his blood. He did the only thing he could think to do. He crouched down, put a shoulder in her belly and stood with her over his shoulder. He started down the stairs while she was still in shock.

When Vince started down the stairs with her slung over his shoulder like a sack of some grain product for the second time in her life, she was literally stunned speechless. When she got her wits about her enough that speech would have been possible, she realized that yelling at him while watching his ass muscles work as he descended the stairs had absolutely no dignity at all. And, given the position she was in, she needed all the dignity she could dig up. Given how short her dress was on one side, she was very glad that this time she had something on under it, and that dignity was often overrated anyway. When he entered his room, closed the door and turned on the light, she tensed in preparation for being put back on her feet.

"Better turn the stereo on first, I guess," he said to her, almost conversationally. "I figure that the rest of the house is gonna need all the help they can get not to hear you taking me down a few." He flicked on the lamp before picking up the remote to his stereo.

"Smarter than you look. Ain't sayin' much, but you're smarter than you look," she hissed.

Oh, she was royally pissed with him. Things were going to get a lot angrier before they got better. He turned on the stereo and turned on whatever random heavy rock CD was in the player to a moderate volume. It wouldn't drown her out, but it would at least muffle her words to the rest of the occupants of the downstairs level. Rather than set her on her feet, he tossed her onto the bed on her back. He figured it would keep her disorientated for a further few seconds. He was right and he used the reprieve to take his shirt off. He figured he'd get a head start on her.

She scrambled up and back onto her feet. "Just where do you get off?"

He cocked a brow at her question, implying a pithy answer to her inquiry. When her brows drew together over her pert little nose, he wished he could take back his flippant answer to her question. Ok, so, implying 'between your legs' wasn't the smartest move on his part. She was swiftly forgetting about working off their anger and focusing solely on being pissed off. That wasn't what he had in mind. He forced his voice to sound calm and rational. "You actually went out with the cop. The _cop_, Temp. Then you let the cop take you home. Home to this house, of all places. And let the cop touch you in the driveway."

She got in his face, crowding into his space. Showing not one iota of what would have been intelligent fear. "The cop spent the whole night paying attention to _me_." Her growled 'me' was punctuated with a sharp jab to the chest with one sensibly manicured nail. The trend continued as she did. "The cop never once stared at another girl for more than a couple seconds while he was out on a date with _me_. The cop didn't flirt with anyone but _me_. The cop didn't let other girls put their hands on him right in front of _me_. The cop didn't tell me about the other girl he really wanted to screw ad nauseam." She paced away a few steps, tried to control her need to scream. To just shriek with her head thrown back, in some throwback to evolution. _If you're dealing with an ape, you might as well act like one!_ She stalked back over to her opponent and finished with one more swift jab to the sternum. "_Jim_ treated me like a lady." '_Bout drove me crazy, but he still did it_.

When she threw Amanda at him, and Mia yet again, all the anger he had gotten over came rushing back in a red wave. He took a step her way. "So it's treating you like a lady when he puts his hands on you?"

"You call that little grab on my way out of the truck putting his hands on me?" She rolled her eyes. "But the answer to your question is yes. It's treating me like a lady when he takes my elbow to help me up curbs, when he guides me through doors ahead of him with a hand on the small of my back. When he hands me into the truck. When he keeps his eyes on me for one whole evening without the necessity of a cat fight to ensure it."

"I'll show you putting hands on you," he growled, taking another step her way to allow him to grab her shoulders before leaning over to kiss her again. Her words conjured up thoughts of the cop with his hands on her waist, holding her hand. Just, _no_. He had no right. His mouth claimed hers, his hands slid up from her shoulders to cup her face. His mood was still bordering on violent, thoughts of the cop—Jim—touching her body driving him past the point of rational thought. He wanted to find the cop and put an end to the problem. Dead men didn't hold girl's hands, didn't take them on dates. But since that wasn't an option, and in his few lucid moments, he realized how irrational it was to want to kill another human over the simple act of touching a woman that he had no right to feel possessive over anyway, he knew taking Jim out wasn't an option. But that didn't stop the feelings of needing to do it.

She allowed her hands to play across the muscles of his bare back. He'd been flirting with the blonde in the shop today, but it was thoughts of _her_ with another man touching her that had driven him to the brink of insanity with jealousy. It was her he had waited all night on. Imagining the worst. That had to count for something. So when she felt his fingers tug at the zip of her dress before tugging at the tie at her nape, she did nothing to stop the downward motion of the black cloth, allowing it to puddle inky around her feet. She'd known where she would end up at the conclusion of her night all evening long. It didn't come as a surprise. She still knew she had to make him work for it. And she still knew she had every right to be pissed off.

"Did his hands on you make you feel like this?" he ground out against her mouth.

He was so jealous it almost frightning. It was frightening in many ways. How quickly could he turn into over-possessive, scary, stalker boyfriend? It didn't matter. In a few days she'd be far too far away for him to find it practical. She didn't answer his question with an answer, but rather with a question of her own. "Did her hands on you make you crazy like mine do? Does thinking about another man holding her hand make you want to break things like thinking of Jim touching _me_ does?"

He didn't answer her either. The answer to both questions was painfully obvious. He pushed her back onto the bed and looked at her lying there where she landed. Her hair was a wild curtain of inky fire around her shoulders. Her skin looked like pale honey in the weak lamplight, the curves of it hidden only by the black lace boyshorts she had been wearing under her dress and the knee high black leather boots still on her feet. He caught one of her legs at the ankle and lifted it before lowering the zipper of her boot toward her foot and pulling the shoe off her leg. He repeated the motion on the other side before crawling over her onto the bed. Her arms found their way around him, welcoming his presence even though her anger still burned as hot as his. He turned out the light.

And as he lay wrapped around her afterward, wrapped in her hair like a silken, scented cocoon, he had to muse that the metal from the stereo likely hadn't saved poor Leon from hearing more than he bargained for. It was a hell of a way to burn out one's anger though. Much better than letting it smoulder and spark for days. He clicked the radio off with the remote, which he found on the pillow behind her head. He wrapped one of her curls around his finger, rubbing the texture between it and his thumb almost absently. He sighed. "She's Bryce's sister and I've known her since before grade school. Since before Dominic. Almost since before I can remember because I only vaguely remember when she was born. There will never be anything more than friendship between me'n Amanda. She's practically my sister. I knew I wasn't catching you once you took off but I was gonna tell you at supper. Then you never came home for supper because you were out with the cop." He spit out the word cop like it tasted bad. It was clear he hadn't totally forgiven her for going out with the other man.

"Jim and I had literally no feelings for each other in any sense of anyone's world." It was her turn to sigh. She would rather not admit the fact she hadn't been able to find herself attracted to the handsome officer to Vince. "He knew it from the beginning of the night and so did I." It felt like giving him too much ammo against her. But she couldn't say nothing after he'd told her about the other girl. "It was like dating your best friend. I only went out with him in the first place because I was pissed off at you for the blonde skan—" she thought better of her comment when she thought on the information she had been provided with. "The blonde chick."

He chuckled a moment at her catty comment before sobering. "How's the hand?" Had their violent sport reopened her wound? How did she make him forget she was still female when she pissed him off? He sure didn't treat her like she was anything less than his equal in size and strength then.

"Fine. I'm fine." She yawned.

"Yeah, I agree. It was a long night." Walking around angry, unable to settle and looking for an excuse to pound someone or something into dust and not being obliged. "Night."

"Umm," was her only answer.

She was over half asleep already, her deep, rhythmic breaths warming his chest. With a split second decision, he decided that Dom could survive without him until ten or so the next day. It was already two thirty. There wasn't any way he was getting up at eight. It just wasn't happening. Not after the night he'd had. He unplugged the clock with a rumbled 'oops' before settling comfortably on his back, draping the girl half on top of him with a contented sigh that she slept through, secure in his presence. _How're you gonna sleep when she's not around to be that comfortable weight of skin on skin on top of you? _He told himself to shut up, took a deep breath of air scented like her hair and fell quickly asleep.


	60. Of Solving Puzzles and Tables Turned

**AN: Sorry this was so long coming. I'm literally never home anymore. This is quite...adult...rated. So read it at your own risk. I'll try to update faster this time. Notice the use of the word try, however.  
**

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter Sixty – **Of Solving Puzzles and Tables Turned**

"No Vince?" Dom asked Leon across the breakfast table in the morning.

"Um, I wouldn't count on it, no."

Dom's eyes narrowed. "Why not?"

"He was, ah, playing music in his room really late last night," Leon tried to answer tactfully. He tried to remember what Dominic thought of sharing dirty talk around the breakfast table. He tried to remind himself it wouldn't be right to get what he had heard out of his system in front of the whole group. But he wanted to. He wanted to tell them all in an angry tone what it had made him feel to hear her calling out someone else's name in the night. To hear the man she was with answer in kind. To hear them so obviously enjoying each other. To tell them all what it would do to him when she was finally broken by the very man who seemed to care so much for her right now and she still wouldn't turn to him for anything more than comfort in friendship. But he couldn't tell them any of that. Couldn't tell them how it had twisted in his gut to open the door of Vince's room to wake his friend up for work and find the two of them in a tangle of limbs in the centre of the bed, her face hidden against the side of his neck, and his head turned slightly to the side so that his cheek rested on hers.

Dom looked like he still just didn't quite get it. Letty leaned over and whispered something to him. When she straightened up, it was clear she had managed to enlighten him. "Ok, so I guess he's staying home."

"No big, I'll just head down for awhile," Jesse offered. "Sounds like I won't be needed to entertain Temp until sometime later this afternoon anyway," he offered with a smile. Everyone could tell it wasn't quite confident, that Jesse wasn't quite sure what he should make of the situation.

"Still can't believe she went out with a cop," Dom muttered.

"The cop was hot," Mia interjected. "If she hadn't, I would have."

Letty grinned. "How hot?"

"Calendar full of hot guys hot."

"She only went out with him to piss Vince off and it worked, so get over it," Leon growled.

"Simmer down now Le," Letty pushed back lightly. She knew that while Tempest's only goal had been to slash at Vince, she had also managed to slash at Leon. Unintended or not, she had also managed to make Leon unsure, and maybe a little angry with her. "Like you said, she only did it to piss V off so they could make up. Not like she really wanted to date the cop." It was clear Leon had more he wanted to say. He visibly forced his mouth shut and went back to contemplating his plate. Letty rolled her eyes. _Boys_!

"Finish up and let's get outta here," Dom growled to break the mood.

When he woke up, it was obviously daylight outside and he had a face full of hair that wasn't his. He turned his head to find the source and found Tempest asleep with her head hanging down into the crook of his shoulder, her breath warm on his neck and her hair flipped up over her head, streaming over the pillows and onto his face. He gathered it behind her back and smoothed it down before straining his head to the side to try and get a look at her face. She was out like a light. A quick glance at the still functioning clock on his wall showed it was just after eleven. He groaned. He really hadn't intended to blow Dom off for so long. But he couldn't remember the last time he'd slept so well.

She shifted in her sleep and the slide of skin on skin was one of the better things he'd ever experienced in the first few minutes of daily consciousness. She made a few murmured, unintelligible noises in her sleep before settling back down, her hand sliding from where it had been resting with the pads of her fingers on his collarbone down to rest on his hip as she dug closer to him. He didn't know how it was possible for her to get closer than laying totally on top of him while naked and asleep, but it felt like she had managed it when her lips came to rest semi-parted against the side of his neck. Her breath was a hot, erotic slide over his skin. Or, he was just hot for her, like he always was when he woke up with her in his bed.

As he lay under her, unconsciously stroking her back, feeling her hands on him even though she was asleep and unaware of her touch, and her lips on him even though she didn't know they were there, he remembered the time she had woken up before him. And what she'd done to bring him into the world of the living with her.

Arms wrapped tightly but softly around her, he rolled slowly to his side before lowering her softly onto her back amongst the pillows. She muttered a bit but didn't wake up. He tried to move away from her. A frown crossed her face and she sighed, her brows knitted together. He didn't want to wake her, but he had to get some distance from her. He ran the back of his hand over her cheek and she quieted, her sigh whispering over his hand. He lay on his side beside her, his head propped up on one hand as he looked down at where she lay. He knew if she were awake she'd be embarrassed to be the center of his attention while so exposed and naked. That was until he aroused her to a point where she just didn't care anymore.

He smiled, thinking of turning the tables on her. Maybe because she was asleep and not awake to push him, and tease him, and just look at him in that way she had that just conveyed her impatience better than words ever could, but he felt like maybe this time he could just take his time and draw the experience out.

With that thought in mind, he brushed his mouth over the fluted edge of her collarbone. He watched her eyes move behind closed lids and wondered what was going on in her mind while she slept and he played. Was she simply asleep still? Did his touch make her mind conjure a dream to match his actions? Was the person co-starring in that dream with her him? That line of thought was banished as quick as it came. If he was going to do this, he couldn't do it while thinking she might be imaging another in her mind.

He ran his free hand down the side of her face, across the side of her neck, down the center of her chest and lower, before sliding over the slight convexity of her belly to cup her hip. Female skin had never fascinated him so much before he had found hers to play with. She was easily as tough as he was, in her own way. And the same went for strong. She couldn't bench what he could, or lift the things he could. But when it came right down to it, if you considered that she was a female half his size, he had to bet she was almost his equal. But her skin was soft and it hid the strength underneath, which his did not. Her build wasn't obvious.

His build was obvious. If it wasn't, he would often find himself in pretty hot water. With the situations he put himself into, it was his intimidating build that let the others know he was not the one they wanted to pick a fight with to work out their petty frustrations, or to try and give themselves that big man feel. His strength on obvious display let the others of his world know that he meant business. There wasn't a thing about him soft. But solely because she was a woman, despite the fact she was just as strong as him in a female way, her soft skin hid the strength from anyone who wasn't looking for it. Also fascinating were the faint lines on her skin the sun had temporarily tattooed her with. She was the same even, light gold across her whole body but for narrow lines across her hips, along the lowest dip of her belly, and across her chest, faintly winding around her neck and across her back.

The amount of her skin on display for the other men at the beach momentarily made him want to break all of their random faces for looking at her. If he ever did go to the beach with her, she was leaving her shirt and shorts the hell on. He wasn't watching other guys stare at her. He wouldn't have time to break all their faces. He tripped his fingers across the line of her hip, and smoothed his hand back up toward her chest, her skin like living silk under his rough and callused palm.

Her head rolled on the pillow, her face turned toward him. She frowned again, and her hand reached out for something. Somehow knowing she was seeking him with her outstretched hand, he took her much smaller hand into his own and twined his fingers with hers before leaning down to kiss her mouth softly. Her frown faded as she kissed him back, still quite asleep. He smiled against her cheek as he headed for her ear after releasing her lips, still holding their joined hands over her head on the pillow.

She huffed softly but carried on sleeping. He scraped his teeth over her neck, releasing her hand so he could slide his down to her waist. He finally figured she was going to sleep through a bit before what he did to her woke her, and closed his mouth over the tip of her breast. Her back arched into his mouth and she sighed something that sounded suspiciously like his name. A fact that pleased him to no end. He teased her further in the same vein, and she said his name on a soft sigh a few more times as her breathing started to come faster than before.

Fascinating. Her reactions to his touch when she didn't have any thoughts of keeping a guard up were simply fascinating. Her responses were totally honest. She wasn't awake to hide anything she was thinking or feeling from him. Not that she often did, in this sense, he figured. But she might have often tried to make how she reacted more about rough and wild than she really felt in the thought it was what he wanted. But not now. Now she shuddered delicately under his touch, said his name on sighs, and arched languidly into his hands. Now, while she was asleep, there was time to slow down and not race to the finish. Fascinating to blame that tendency on her. Fascinating more by far to realize it was the truth. It was more her than he who turned every situation into a race, into some sort of competition. She was so driven to win every situation. But what was the prize in the race she spurred them onto every time they were together intimately?

What was she scared of? Why did she have to push him into frantic action every time they were together? Ok, it wasn't _always_ her. But more often than not when he spared time to think on it. There was never time for this slow awakening of the senses. Just wild reactions and a rush to the finish. And because she was who she was, and how she was, exploring mutual reactions to their actions was something he wanted to do. And without the hectic flight to the end for once.

Normally he wouldn't care less. The finish was the point with the kind of girl he normally found in his bed. There wasn't much sense spending time getting to know the likes and responses of easy women. It wasn't what they wanted or expected in the first place. They wanted something from you alright. But it wasn't necessarily good sex. That was just a fringe benefit to them. If the sex was good, it was ok as they would be there participating either way. But, for the females, the sex wasn't really the point of the action. They really wanted the status, the cheap and temporary rise in their own worth to the underground world they spent their evenings and weekends pretending reality in. Monday to Friday they were waitresses, secretaries, clerks, college co-eds, dancers, cashiers. They didn't get too many professional women in their world. But there wasn't much point in caring what a girl liked you to do to her if you'd never see her again anyway, and that was how both of you wanted it.

But he found himself marvelling at the way this woman responded. Fascinated by the puzzle that was Tempest. He was never sure what she was thinking, or what she wanted. He was sure he knew how to give her what worked for her in bed, at least. Could give her what she needed. Often more than once, he allowed himself to smirk with the self appreciating thought. But it was the fact he gave a good god damn that had him thrown. She was supposed to be an easy solution to the daily question. It was supposed to be convenient to have someone so well matched to his appetites in the house. It wasn't supposed to turn into some desire to shock and please her with his skills in bed. Obviously, he was doing something right. He had her practically panting and the only place he'd touched her south of the border was along her hip bone. It was time to correct that oversight, he decided with a grin.

It was clear what she wanted, but he didn't oblige her right away. He let her want and attempt to get what she wanted without reaching her goal for a minute first. He had thought it before, and couldn't get it out of his mind. She was _fascinating_. The concentration lines on her forehead, despite the fact she was asleep. That, and the set of her bow mouth—slightly pursed—showed that in her subconscious or in the dream her mind was feeding her to go along with his actions, she was scheming how to get her way. He fought a laugh. She really liked to get her own way.

She'd like getting his way this time, he was fairly certain. He teased her mercilessly while she slept, her figiting and sighing showing that in her mind, she had some idea what was going on. Her eyelids started to flutter more rapidly.

"V?" His name was a query for reassurance and a plea for more.

"Shush," he kissed her, still stroking her where she needed his touch, in all the ways she liked. His familiar voice reassured her it was really him, even as his equally familiar touch proved the point. Her back was arched so tight he was almost scared she'd snap in half when she finally fell over the edge. She moaned in her throat, kissed him back.

"Please. V?"

"I'm here. Come on Trouble. You know what you want."

"I—I need—" And with a gasp she found what she needed.

_Fascinating_. It was his last thought before he decided she was awake and aware enough that it was time enough to start that ever present race for the finish. She welcomed his presence on top of her with open arms, her hands tangled in his hair as it was his turn to groan her name and shudder. The race was a draw as they each reached the finish line simultaneously, the other's name the victory call of choice for each.

He mused about the lack of finesse yet again, and a rueful smile formed on his lips, still pressed against the side of her neck as he tried to catch his bearings. He kept his weight on his forearms but wasn't ready to move just yet. Just not to suffocate his playmate. His utterly fascinating, utterly perfectly matched playmate.

"I might not hate mornings so much if I woke up like that every day," she mumbled, drugged with sleep and his touch.

"Waking you like that every day would kill me inside of a year." He finally found the energy to slide off her, landing on his stomach in an exhausted yet happy sprawl beside her. "Not that I'd mind."

She stretched languidly with an inelegant yawn. "I was having the best dream. And then it wasn't."

"As long as you were having the best dream about _me_ that suddenly wasn't." He was going to take a nap, he figured, as he half heartedly tried to make his statement sound threatening.

"Um," she answered with the noncommittal noise before crawling onto his back and sprawling into the same position as him, but on top of him, not the sheets. "Sleep more?"

"Oh yeah. A year more sleep might be enough to get me to recover."

"Wake me up when you get up."

"K," he muttered. He was always amazed how quickly she could slip under the weight of slumber. She was asleep again almost before he could process the fact. Her arms were laid out across the tops of his and her fingers twined with his, her palms flat on the backs of his hands. Her head was resting on the pad of muscle on the back of his right shoulder and her breath was softly ruffling his hair with a steady, deep rhythm. Her body, all her muscles, had gone totally slack. With the heat of her relaxing him, it didn't take him long to join her in sweet oblivion.


	61. Of Perfection and the Imperfect World

**AN: **So here's the deal. I couldn't be bothered rewriting this to tone down the rating. So sorry in advance for making you read my smut attempts. Don't read it if M+ story content is going to offend. Otherwise, read and enjoy. T

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 61 – **Of Perfection and the Imperfect World**

As per normal, he woke up first. The reversal of their normal waking positions threw him at first. Well, not reversal, because she was almost always on him in some fashion. But he'd never woken up to her draped over his back before. He figured they weren't reversed. She was where she always was. It was he who was reversed. He normally wasn't much for sleeping on his stomach, but it was novel with her where she was. She'd shifted at some point in time, and now her slightly parted lips were barely touching his earlobe, her warm breath tickling over the fine hair around his ear with each exhale. He wanted her again. The swiftness of it was becoming familiar. He rolled over under her, bit her earlobe. "You need to wake up."

"Why?" she questioned in a whine, never opening her eyes. No matter how well rested she was, she always hated to get woken up. She liked to wake on her own terms. Due to how much she could sleep, that rarely ever happened. So she was always slightly petulant on waking.

"Because I'm about to fuck you, and I'd rather you were awake and actively participating. But if you want to just sit up," he leaned her back against his bent up knees, slid inside her, "and sleep in that sort of propped up sitting position you have goin' on right now, that'll work too. I can finish up without you being conscious."

She arched her back over his knees, driving her deeper onto him as she laughed. "You're going to have me trained into enjoying waking up any time now." Her laugh turned into a quickly indrawn breath as his hands held her hips steady as his lifted off the bed. "Yeah, really enjoying waking up."

"You are totally perfect," he groaned. It was true he didn't really know that much about it, but a woman who would let you wake her up twice in one morning to screw her brains out couldn't be all that common. Same went for one who wouldn't get offended to be told she was about to get fucked. And would just bonelessly stay where she was put and shudder delicately while you did what you wanted with her. It was just almost too much to take in. "Just don't move and it'll be totally perfect."

"Why can't I move?" She wiggled her hips experimentally, as if testing to see if the sky would fall if she moved. His tone had implied something equally dire.

"Because this is supposed to take longer than thirty seconds," he growled back, angry with himself, and what looking at her on him as she was did to his control.

She laughed again. "It's only been an hour since you last got off you know? You should have a little more restraint now. Not less."

"Yeah, maybe. Guess I'll just have to rush you along." He bumped up into her again even as his fingers sought out teasing places that had the laugh right out of her voice. The lilting laughter turned into begging moans.

"Oh fuck me!" she gasped before she tensed against his thighs and came. The need had rushed over her so fast she hadn't had a chance to even think about holding it off, making him work harder. She'd wanted to, and thus the exclamation. It wasn't a request, but an expletive of her own frustration with her lack of control over her body.

He realized that her meaning wasn't the literal one he was already acting out with her, but rather an exclamation of surprise. It didn't matter. Hearing the perfectly perfect woman who never talked dirty—not during sex in any event—and rarely even put what she wanted him to do to her into words call 'oh fuck me' was it for him. Perhaps it hadn't been begging, or a request, but he took it as such and gave into her unintentional request until he surged hard and deep into her and came with a loud growl. She fell forward onto his chest, still panting softly. "Sleep more?"

"No, no more sleep." He kissed her hard. "Get up and go to the shop for awhile time. Before they start to think I've got you tied to the bed."

"Well, given you're the one who was supposed to get up at eight and be there for nine, maybe I'm the one that's got you tied to the bed."

He chuckled. "Maybe. But if we stay here any longer there won't be any more sleep to be had anyway. Just more sex."

"I don't know if I can take any more sex without some sort of recovery period. But that doesn't mean I want to get up from where I am." Her eyes drifted shut, her head fell flat against his shoulder, and with a sigh she started to drift off again.

"Do you ever sleep at home?"

"A few hours a night. Whatever I can fit in. Why?"

"It's like you're making up for it now, here, while you don't work." He chuckled.

"Satisfying you is harder than my full time job. I've known a lot of guys, and I've never heard any of them want to get laid before bed, then twice in the morning."

"That's just 'cause none of them knew you were the kind of girl who'd like to get laid once before bed and twice in the morning." He kissed her again. "Come on, let's get up and get outta here for awhile. Go show Jess you're still alive. That I haven't killed you with my attention."

"Or killed me for going out with Jim."

"Or killed you for going out with Jim," he agreed. "I'll let you have the shower first," he wheedled, trying to tempt her out of bed.

"Why can't you just go back to sleep like a good boy?"

"I'm not tired anymore. I'm starving. And I don't want to get into a wrench throwing match with Dominic. It's time to go."

"You go. Send home food for me. Have the delivery guy wake me. And feed me."

"If you think I'm sending some other guy here to bring you food while you're naked and then feed it to you," he growled.

She laughed. "I was more or less implying that _you_ should go get me food and then bring it back here and feed it to me. No need to get all crazed."

"You're evil."

"So they tell me." She groaned. "Fine. I'll get up and get in the shower first. But you have to stay out. Twice in one morning is enough."

"Says you," he pretended to whine, amused with his desire to kid around with her, to tease her and play with her. He was getting in over his head. "Besides that, shower sex doesn't really count against the tally. It's on a separate count than bed sex."

"It's all going to have to be after a meal sex. Unless I'm allowed to sleep through it."

"Baby, you can't sleep through the things I do to you and you know it."

"Preen all you want, you stuck up pervert, but you're not getting any more sex before the sky gets dark. There have to be limits."

"Why?"

"I dunno. There just do." She started to move to get up, and stopped with a groan before falling back into her original position, sprawled on top of him. "Carry me to the shower?"

"Why would I do that when you denied me more sex?"

"It's because of all the sex I already gave you that I'm too exhausted to take myself there, that's why. Besides, if you carry me to the shower, I won't feel it necessary to tell anyone about your little problem this morning." She schooled her face to look sympathetic and conciliatory.

"Excuse me? Little problem?"

"Yes. It's sad when a man starts to get old and starts to lose, um, his, well, staying power."

With a growl he started to tickle her ribs while holding her down so she couldn't get away. "Unless you want to be shown first hand right this minute just how long I can go, I'd drop that line of bargaining."

"This is supposed to take longer than thirty seconds," she mimicked in a pantomime of his earlier statement. She smirked as she toyed with a piece of his hair.

"That was a one time situation brought about because of extenuating circumstances. It won't happen again."

His tone was so serious she was sure she'd taken her teasing one step too far. But she hadn't, not really. He often said things to her in jest that she would have to take very seriously if she didn't know he was kidding. She placed her palms on his cheeks to hold his face steady before kissing him. She knew when he tried to resist her that he was pissed with her. "Don't get all mad at me. I was _teasing_. I know—trust me, _I_ know—that it was the exception not the rule for things to go that quickly." She kissed him again, and was frustrated when he continued to ignore her. "Besides, I was gonna hold out on you longer than I did but I couldn't, so it's not like I'm so different. I didn't say what I said to be seriously mean." He wouldn't look at her at all. She'd never understand men. Not ever. After how great the day had started now it was fucked, because she'd said something off the cuff, in jest, and he'd taken her seriously, despite the fact he had to have known she was teasing. "Fine. Be like that."

She got up and picked up her bag most likely to have daytime casual clothes in it and opened the door of the room. No one was around so she walked to the bathroom and shut the door. She had half an hour to compose herself. Half an hour was about the longest she could draw out a shower and not have it seem odd. She shivered, told herself she was over reacting, and started the water. Hot. She felt cold. Had goose bumps.

Seventy two hours. Give or take a few. That was all there was for them. And he wanted to spend an afternoon of it fighting over something stupid. She got under the water. Washed and conditioned her hair. Washed herself.

Couldn't face the world yet. She turned her face into the spray. By her calculation she had about fifteen minutes of her thirty left. Tears joined the water running down her face. She consoled herself. No one would ever know. Just her and the water. The hard part was she had to get out of the water at some point. Had to dry off, put clothes on and act like nothing was wrong. Like she wasn't in love with a man she wasn't speaking to now, and would likely never speak to again in about three days. Her head bowed, her palms pressed flat to the tiled wall in front of her.

She took a deep breath in to try and get herself under control. When she released it, it shuddered out of her chest. She took another deep breath in, sure she was winning the battle. Then a sob escaped her. She tried to get herself to stop. She really did. When she couldn't she simply put her balled fist to her mouth and allowed herself to sob. _Just for a minute. Then I'll be ok,_ she told herself. Another sob shook her and she was glad the closed door and the pounding water would keep the sound from reaching anyone else.

He'd walked into the bathroom intending to tell her off in earnest for what she'd said. Her comment had been playful and innocent of any malice and he knew it. But it had also slammed home the message that he was totally wrapped up in her, and it scared him, which angered him. So he was going to take the anger out on her little self righteous, I'll-just-walk-off-on-you-with-my-nose-in-the-air ass. He'd decided to wait for her to finish and get out of the spray before he started in at her at the last minute and leaned on the sink ledge to wait her out. He watched her wash her hair, rinse the conditioner out. Oblivious. She had her eyes closed. She turned to face the front wall. Watched her head bow down, her arms brace against the wall. The clear plastic shower curtain obscured her just enough to give her shape a dreamlike quality. He looked around and realized it was uncommonly steamy in the bathroom, which was adding to the hazy effects.

A noise brought his focus back on her. He figured he'd imagined it. Then she just quivered in place, put the knuckles of her right hand into her mouth and bit down as she started to cry in earnest. Like she figured she wasn't going to get herself stopped any time soon, her fist left her mouth and her arms wrapped around herself in a sad little hug. Hot water plastered her hair around her shoulders, down her face. He'd hurt her again. Remained ignorant of the fact. Thought she was walking off in a snit to be self righteous. Let her just walk away. And again little miss lone wolf had slunk off to lick the wounds in private because she wasn't willing to allow him to see her hurting if she had a choice. She had to lick the wounds alone. Wounds he'd inflicted on her. He'd never dream of being so indifferent to Mia. But he bought into Tempest's tough and untouchable front so well that most times he just figured she wasn't as easy to wound as other girls. Treated her like a guy he was used to roughhousing with. Try as she did to act like one, and manage as she did most of the time, she wasn't just one of the guys.

He picked up the huge yellow fluffy towel off the shelf beside the shower before he pulled the curtain back, killed the water and wrapped the towel around her in a quick succession of movements, before picking her up out of the tub. Her skin was flushed pink from the hotter than necessary water. She tried to stop crying again, with limited success. She managed to nearly choke herself and not much more. He was surprised she didn't fight him off, that she let him pick her up and set her on her feet in front of him.

"I don't know what's wrong with me," she managed to say, a shuddering breath punctuating the statement. Pretending the situation hadn't bothered her much at all was the only way she could see to deal with it. What he'd said hadn't been that bad. It was just all the other circumstances merging together and pressing down that had made her take it so badly. He couldn't know how upset he'd made her. It gave him too much power over her. And he wouldn't understand. Nor appreciate the sentiment involved. His arms came around her and she clung to him for dear life in spite of herself. While she was already broken down surely it wouldn't make any difference if she acted like a sissy for another few minutes.

He sighed. "I'm not good at you. You had me pegged right all those days ago. I don't know how to treat you, what to say to you. You're not one of the guys, no matter how good you act like it a lot of the time. You're not the kind of girl I see myself with. I don't know what to do about it. But it's hardly your fault. It's not because there's something wrong with you." He gathered her wet hair off her face, at a loss for what else to say or do. She kept crying, finally leaning back in his arms.

"Don't just stand there. Slap me or sedate me or something. You can't just let me keep crying!"

"Why not?"

"I don't cry. Crying is for pansies and little kids."

Rather than do as she asked, he held her tighter and rubbed her back. There was a lot about her he didn't know. Like where that idea had come from. He assumed he knew her well, and he was wrong. There were depths to her that he had no idea about. He hated it when she cried. But that was because he didn't know what to do about it. Because it made him feel helpless. Because it make him feel the need to beat the source of her tears into dust, and most times he couldn't. Either because the source wasn't tangible or because the source was him. Not because he didn't think she should cry if she felt like it. So where had the idea that it wasn't ok for a person to cry if they needed to come from in her head? Finding out the real answer to that would just let her worm her way into his soul a little bit more and she was already in too deep for comfort. "Why don't you go get dressed and lay down for awhile? I'll take a shower, get ready and we can go eat. You'll feel better after you eat. Right?"

"Maybe," she mumbled.

"Likely." He bent his head, kissed her mouth, her cheek, before laying his cheek on the top of her head. Without any sort of shoes on her feet, the height advantage he had on her was magnified, making her seem even smaller in comparison to him than she normally did. He felt smaller than her, for not 'picking on someone his own size.' "Go. I won't be long." He watched her shuffle out of the room, towel still wrapped around her and dragging her bag by the strap behind her.


	62. Of Torture and Temptation

AN: I had time and more inclination so I toned this chapter back a bit. So if something is lacking, something is adult content. It snowed all last night, (FCK!) and is raining and nasty out now, and cold, so I decided to start being a well behaved user of and follow the rules again. At least for this one chapter. Enjoy. T

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 62 – **Of Torture and Temptation**

"When it comes down to temptation, she's on both sides of the fence."

When he made it back to his room she was curled in a ball at the edge of the bed, still damp hair streaming out behind her head and eyes closed. She wasn't crying anymore, but she still looked sad and pale, with one hand tucked under her cheek and the other curled under her chin. The voice that told him he was an asshole started up a racket again. He dressed quietly before crouching beside her. He brushed a curl off her cheek. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For ruining a good day. For making you sad. For taking what you said so out of context. Can we go eat something and try to forget about it?" She finally opened her eyes and looked at him, like she could see right through him. The look in her smoky green eyes was so serious, where before had been such a light teasing. It was like now she was trying to figure out all the problems with the world and not having much luck. He kicked himself again. The playful had been so fun and he'd put the serious there. Now he had to figure out a way to bring playful back. If he could.

"I think I'd like that," she finally answered.

"Good." He stood up and offered her a hand. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up before taking the offered assistance and standing. "I guess you're not up for much, huh?"

"Why do you say that?" she asked, her eyes narrowed in suspicious question.

"The baggy grey sweats—which are mine, I might add," he chuckled as he figured that out. It explained why she had the waist rolled up several times, at least. "And I've never seen you in a tee shirt before. It's always been some sort of undershirt or tank top, or less." But the way his sweats sat around her hips was very sexy, in that I-just-want-to-take-them-off-your-body-right-now way. He wondered how she was keeping them up at the same time as he wondered why he liked seeing his clothes on her body so much. The ringer style baby doll tee she had on went well with his sweats, but it certainly said 'I'm dressed down to do nothing' or 'I'm going to shoot some hoops on a dusty old court'. Which gave him an idea. "Let's get eating out of the way. I have something I wanna do after we're done."

She studied him another moment, attempting to be sure he hadn't just said she looked bad in what she was wearing. "Fine. Let's go then."

"After you."

"You just wanna stare at my ass while I climb the stairs."

"Guilty." He wrapped an arm around her waist before she could start up them. "I also want to kneel you down on that second stair. Well, after I take my pants back, pull you back against me while I stand behind you here. Leaves my hands free to reach, well, everywhere." He was telling her all of this with his lips just brushing her ear. "And makes it easy to," he bit her earlobe, illustrating his point with action instead of words.

He put the mental picture in her head and once it was there it was hard to shake. "So, are we staying or going?"

Having expected her to give him the brush off or a real set down, her question made him groan. They really did have to hit the shop, and he really was hungry, and now there was a chance she'd be willing to give him stairs sex? "You had to go and act like you'd want the stair sex."

"You don't?"

"Don't get your fur up. I never said that. I never expected you to want to stay. I really, really do want to stay here. But it just wouldn't be right. Besides that, you need a meal before any more strenuous activity."

"Please don't tell me you're blaming what happened before on the fact I need to eat."

"No, but I would be blaming the way you passed out afterward on the fact you really, really need to eat. Let's go find a drive thru somewhere, get some food, and go visit everyone else so they know you're alive. Then, afterward, we'll revisit stair sex."

"Ok. If I feel like it then."

"Go. Before I change my mind and decide to never let you out of the bedroom again."

She went, but not without a dirty look back over her shoulder at him, illustrating what she thought of him implying he could make _her_ his sex slave. She was quite sure it would go the other way. He slapped her ass playfully in response. She let it go with difficulty and they reached the driveway in one piece. "Who's car?"

"Mine?"

There was a subtle begging tone that implied the word please even though he didn't come right out and say it. "I guess. It's blocking me in anyway."

Her put out air wasn't lost on him. He knew she pointed out that his car would have to be moved before they could take hers anyway to make it seem less like she was giving him his way than like she was just doing what made the most sense. "True enough. What do you want to eat?" he asked as they slid into the Maxima.

"Whatever. You?"

"Whatever we can eat in the car."

"We're allowed to eat in your car?"

"Generally no, but I've watched you eat. You won't make a mess."

"True enough. You, I worry about though."

"Well, it's my car. If I make a mess, I have no one but myself to blame."

"I suppose."

He started the car and backed it down the driveway. He drove quickly, but with an obvious destination in mind. He entered the drive thru lane, rolling down his window. "What do you want?"

"Whatever. I don't care. Deciding is too much work."

"You do want something, right?" He looked over at her with worry.

"Yeah, just order me whatever. Long as it comes with a large Pepsi."

When it was their turn, she assumed he ordered, but honestly she was zoned into her own world and didn't really catch it. The next thing she knew they were parked with a beautiful view of a windowless brick wall and Vince was digging in brown paper bags, a paper mache tray of drinks balanced between him and the steering wheel. The Maxima didn't have any cup holders; their space had been sacrificed for a place to mount the boost gauge necessitated by the Stillen supercharger.

"Give me the drinks before you spill them everywhere and end up pitching a hissy fit." He handed her the tray with a dirty look. "What were you thinking taking the cup holders out? You need a cup holder in your car when you only have the one car. You drive this every day. How do you survive without a cup holder?"

"By not allowing anyone, ever, including myself, to drink in my car." He grinned at her in spite of himself. "Guess today is a day for exceptions."

"I guess. I still dunno how you do it. If I didn't eat and drink in the car I'd go hungry and thirsty a lot."

"You need to slow down and make time to live instead of just rushing around all over the place."

"We can't all have jobs that allow us to do most of our work in a few evenings a week and make a living at it. Some of us have to have day jobs."

"Thank god I'm not one of you some people. I honestly thought by now that Dom woulda given up on having me 'help' him. We have a much calmer home life when we don't spend eight hours a day trying to work together too." Like that brought them a little too close to talking about her departure, he handed her a bag of food. "Eat already."

"Fine. What do I get?"

"Whatever I ordered you."

She sneered at him. "Always a fuckin' wise ass."

"Well, if you wouldn't pick yourself, you don't get to be pissy over not getting what you wanted now. You get to eat what you get and be glad I got it for you."

"Really? You somehow think I couldn't just get up and walk into the joint and get something else?"

"I've watched you order food before. I think I likely did ok. Just eat it already before it gets colder than it likely already was when I ordered it."

"That's attractive."

"It's not my fault that you made me too lazy to want to get outta the car." He shovelled his mouth full of French fries. "When you wanna eat quick, you don't always get quality."

"Do you want to eat mine too?"

"No, why?"

"Because if you keep making it out like it's gonna be gross, I won't."

"It's fine. Eat it already."

She opened the bag and took a tentative sniff. It didn't smell too bad. Her bag did not contain French fries. A fact she was heartily grateful for. She didn't do French fries every often and didn't really like them all that much. The burger turned out to be chicken, and was devoid of tomato. She had to figure Vince paid more attention to the things she did than she realized. She finished her burger and before she knew it a caramel Sundae had made its way into her hand. "Treats?"

"Yeah. You seem to like ice cream and caramel so I figured we deserved a little desert."

"But it could get slopped on the car."

"But it won't."

She pretended like she was going to tip the plastic cup over. "But it could."

He growled and made a move to grab her wrist. She righted the cup and started to eat her ice cream with a satisfied grin. She liked making him edgy. When she was finished he gathered the trash and got out of the car to throw it out right away. She realized as she looked around that the interior of the Maxima was spotless. Poor Vince would be very upset to see what the Skyline would look like inside once she got home. If he caught her in the middle of a busy week there would be soda bottles and cups, straw wrappers, sweaters, CDs, and etc all over the place. It felt like she lived in her car over half the time. There was a reason why she kept her deep plastic winter floor mats out all year round. Much as she loved her car she didn't and couldn't keep it clean enough to do surgery out of.

He got back in and shut the door before looking over at her. He started to laugh. "What?" she questioned.

"Nothin'. Come over here a second."

"For what?"

"Just do it. Jesus, you really are trouble."

"We're in a sport compact sedan, not a Hummer. Why could I have to get any closer than this?"

"Because I said so." Because she wouldn't simply obey him, Vince leaned over and dragged her his way with a hand around the back of her neck. He was glad she took her seat belt off to eat. Just another one of her quirks. Once he had her leaning over him he looked up at her. "You got caramel right—" He cut himself off, as rather than finish his statement he drew her face down to his and kissed the corner of her mouth.

She braced her hands on his shoulders and leaned into him, kissing him back with equal intensity, coming up onto her knees on her seat as she leaned across the car at his insistence.

His mouth left hers to move across her cheek and around to her ear and he nibbled.

"Did I get ice cream there too?" Her hands explored his shoulders as his teeth teased her ear.

"No. But you taste better than ice cream anyway. Just as fun to lick too." His hand stole under her top, fingers tracing over her stomach as he kissed her again.

She continued to allow him to lead, following where he took her. Until he started to slide her shirt up toward her head. "What're you doin'?"

"What do you think?" He palmed her breast to illustrate his answer, groaning when he discovered she wasn't wearing anything under her top.

"It's the middle of the afternoon in a public parking lot!" Which didn't stop her from leaning into his touch.

"So? The windows are blacked out and the brick wall isn't going to tell anyone." His fingers plucked at her as his other hand slid her top up more, bunching the cloth under her arms. She caved with a sigh, lifting her arms over her head to allow him to finish the job before she tugged at his tank. He removed it quickly before she could change her mind and tumbled her into his lap with a quick tug on her arm. She landed with her back to his door and her feet still on the passenger seat.

She turned toward him, her arms finding their way around his neck as they fell into another deep kiss. She couldn't believe she was allowing him to take things so far in the front seat of his car in the middle of the daytime, in the middle of a public parking lot. But when his fingers tripped up and down her spine, she understood. She was addicted to what his hands on her skin did to her body. Which also explained how she came back to reality for a moment to find she was no longer wearing any clothes, at all.

Vince reclined his seat a bit, slid it back from the wheel, and then pulled her down against his chest again. After everything that had happened already in their day, after all he'd done to her, here she was so wrapped up in him she hadn't even realized when he'd stripped her pants off her body. It was amazing and only served to make him think he was an asshole, who didn't deserve her. But then he was glad he was an asshole, because it was going to be his excuse to have her anyway, deserve her or not. "I can't keep my hands off you."

"Good, don't," she answered, twisting around to straddle his lap, one knee beside each of his hips. "Don't recall asking you to," she muttered breathlessly against his lips.

"You are sitting on me naked in my car." He looked over her as she sat perched over him. The sun gave her skin a warm glow and picked up the cherry tones in her hair. Her hair was her best attribute, in his opinion, and certainly it was never more true than when it framed her like a satin backdrop. She hadn't bothered doing anything with it. She'd just laid down on his bed and let it dry. Wild, curly and long was how he liked it anyway. Her hair seemed alive and with the sun behind her through the windshield it looked like it was on fire. He fanned it out around her, found himself slightly in awe how beautiful she was. "If there is a guy luckier than me right now, I don't wanna know."

A grin crossed her face as her hands strayed down his chest and toyed with the button of his jeans. "And you're about to get luckier." Part of her had been upset with the rest for allowing the whole 'sex in a car' thing to go so far. The rest had silenced that small part when she'd seen him looking at her, totally caught up in the moment, in her. Lucky because she was with him. He pulled her head down so he could kiss her again, and she stopped thinking at all.

As he tried to recover some semblance of normal breathing afterward, he left his arms looped around her loosely. A small shudder passed through her as she curled closer into him. He brushed her hair back off her face, shocked to put the name tenderness to what he was feeling for her in that moment.

For all her brashness, crudeness, brazenness, she was actually quite shy. Most of the other qualities were things she channelled and projected to cover the inherent shy good girl she was, but thought she shouldn't be. Thought no one would like. Yet she had just totally let herself go enough to—to quote her—screw his brains out in the car because it was what he wanted. Sure, she'd obviously enjoyed it too. But public sex in the car wouldn't have been her first choice, no matter how blacked out the windows were. "Good?"

"Me, or that?"

He chuckled. "Either or. Both."

"Yes and yes. You?"

"It's not a strong enough word for me, or that either."

She laughed, stretched. "And you wonder why I wanna sleep so much."

"It's because you like waking up."

"Sometimes. Sometimes it's because I'm just exhausted."

"Should I just take you home? I know Dom'll be pissed, but I can handle Dom pissed. We could just watch TV for the afternoon or something." He sounded genuinely concerned as he smoothed hair off her face.

"No, I'm not that tired now. But I think I'll be really ready for sleeping by the time I find myself in a bed again."

"Is that a hint that I should leave you alone tonight?"

"Maybe." There was teasing in her voice. "What'd you do with my clothes?"

"Back seat."

"Who's gonna go get them? You?"

"With you hanging off the front of me?" He chuckled.

"Yeah. That's gonna happen." It was bad enough she'd allowed him to take her clothes off when they were practically in public. She burrowed her head into the crook of his neck in embarrassment thinking about it.

He chuckled, tilting his head back to get a look at her face. Her eyes were closed and either she was simply overly warm or the thoughts of immerging from the car in her current state had put a blush on her cheeks. He leaned his cheek onto hers. "Don't worry. Even if you wanted to I wouldn't let you. Some other guy might look at you like this and get ideas and then I'd have to kill him and where would we be then?"

"Even later getting you to work."

A laugh caught him by surprise. Sometimes her snap answers still caught him by surprise. "That would likely be true." He reached behind himself, felt around until his fingers closed over what was either his shirt or hers. Hers, he found. "Ok, arms up. Let's go. We don't have all day." She complied and he pulled her tee shirt down over her head. Once it was settled around her waist, he pulled her hair out from inside and fanned it around her shoulders before sliding his fingers into it to hold her head while he kissed her. "I don't want to go to the garage," he muttered when he finally let her up for air.

"Why not?"

He shrugged. "Just don't."

"So don't. Pick something else."

"I know you'd never guess it from the way we've acted since you got here, but normally Dom and I don't push each other quite so hard, or fight so much. I really don't want to let him down again."

"How's it letting him down when you're only supposed to be there because he thought Jesse wouldn't be? Jesse's there right now so you'll only be extra."

"Yeah, but Jesse wasn't supposed to have to work while you were here."

"I get the feeling that for the most part, Jesse would rather work than stay home with me. He just wishes that I'd hang out at the garage too. So we can both go hang out at the garage, or we can both not, or you can go and me'n Jesse'll leave. What's it gonna be?"

"We better swing by just to see what's goin' on."

"Ok, find my pants then."

He looked at her, and the look on his face made her worried for what was about to come out of his mouth. "Those are my pants. So what if I don't want to give them back to you?"

"Then the next time you go to put any pair of pants on that I find in your room tonight, you're going to get a nasty surprise."

"You'd actually do it too, wouldn't you?"

"If I was still pissed off enough with you, hell yes."

He reached around behind himself again and felt his fingers close over the cotton material of the grey sweats. Once he handed them to her, Tempest slid back onto her own side of the car and started to pull them on. He reached down to grab his own jeans from where they were still hooked around his legs and lifting his hips, slid them back up in place before doing up the button. When he looked over at her, she was sitting with her back to her door, her bare feet on the seat in front of her as she sat facing him. "Ready?"

"Yeah."

"You ok?"

She sighed. "I'm not exactly Dom's biggest fan."

"You and he are just too much alike, and got off on the wrong foot. That's all. He's not so bad when you get to know him." Vince looked over at her. "Well, and when you don't kick his ass when he already doesn't like you. From trailing him by over a car length from the start." He shook his head. "Ok, there isn't really a lot of hope for you and Dom to be friends now. But if you give him a chance I bet you won't have to hate him forever."

"There isn't a chance in me to give to someone who tried to tell me I had to take his orders and who figured he'd man handle me into doing what he said too. There really isn't a chance in me to give to someone who implied the only way I was good enough to be around was as some sort of drunk fuck call. I'm all out of chances for Dominic Toretto."

"You're not totally innocent in this situation, you know? You pushed him every chance you got just to see how far you could."

"I push everyone to see how far I can. That's not an excuse for everyone to grab me, yell at me, and talk about me like I don't matter."

"I know somewhere along the line someone told you that you couldn't treat Dom like that."

"Why the fuck not? He's just another person. He's not somehow better than everyone else on earth."

"No, he's not. But he's how he is because it's how his life made him. He can't really help it anymore than you can help being you."

Unable to come up with an argument to use against that, but clearly wanting to, her mouth thinned into a mutinous line, but stayed closed.

"You really gonna hate going to the garage for a few hours that much?"

"Not if I don't have to interact with him in any way, shape or form."

"Since I think he feels the same about you, I think you're safe."

She shot another glare his way, but stayed quiet so he reversed the car out of its parking spot and headed toward the shop. When they arrived in the back he parked the car and moved to get out. When he realized his companion had yet to move a muscle, it checked his progress. "You getting outta the car? Or should I crack the windows so you don't die of heat stroke?"

"Fuckin' funny guys," she muttered angrily his way as she climbed out of the Maxima. She wasn't sure if she was glad or pissed off when their arrival went largely unremarked. She left Vince's side almost immediately and wandered over to her cousin. Vince's audacity to try and put the blame for how things were with Dominic at least partially on her hadn't gone over well.


	63. Of Black, White and Shades of Grey

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 63 – **Of Black, White and Shades of Grey**

**AN: I feel like I should write some big long explanation about why I haven't updated anything in god knows how many years, but it's all been said already really. Suffice to say I was working two jobs to the tune of 70 hours a week to save up to move countries for about a year and since managing the move have been busy doing other things including getting engaged. This is still stuff I wrote back in the days I was regularly updating. I haven't written too much new in a long time. But I bought a car, I'm back to thinking about changing filters and spark plugs and driving around thinking with my music cranked up and I've written a couple pages so we'll see. After I finish this, Catalyst is next in my sights. Then part two of Funeral, which will eliminate 2 Fast from the Tempest 'Verse and since Tokyo Drift didn't rate in my world anyway I'm not concerned about Dom's little cameo or explaining it, and I'm doubting the 4****th**** will come close to anything I could have written for them anyway so it also won't be a factor in Tempest 'Verse. (Sorry if that's big headed of me.) You may have to reread to remember. I know I did...**

They spent the rest of the afternoon in the garage. Tempest chose to help Jesse instead of involving herself with any of the rest of his friends and that seemed to suit everyone. They headed home around six o'clock and she wasn't sure what they had planned for the rest of the night. She rode with Jesse to keep things simple. They arrived home to find that Mia already had supper on the table, so they piled around and the girls watched the boys decimate the meal.

After the food was gone they all disappeared at warp speed, leaving Mia to handle the mess on her own. While this wasn't something she was happy about, it was something she was accustomed to and she began the task of putting the dining room and kitchen back together with a tired sigh.

Right after dinner Tempest headed into the living room behind Jesse, intending on allowing him to kick her ass at some video game he just had to show her, care that she wasn't big on games or not. Before she could reach his side and plunk on the floor beside him she found herself grabbed by the wrist and tumbled onto the couch, landing with a startled noise on top of Vince, who was lying stretched out there. "Where you goin'?"

"To play some game with Jesse."

"That's your big plan for tonight? Video games with Jesse?"

"Guess so. Never got a better offer."

He wasn't sure if she was hinting around for him to make her one, or just making a straight statement. Her words were offhand, flip, but with her, that didn't really necessarily mean anything concrete. "I gotta go out. I'll be late. Don't wait up." Why the fuck had he said that to her like that? So abrupt, so dictatorial. Now she was going to get all riled up and pissed off with him and he really had it coming.

"Ok, fine. I won't." She shrugged before moving to get up.

"Don't get all pissy with me."

"I'm not. I don't care what you do with yourself. No concern of mine."

"I know it's not. It's just—It's just that I have a thing to do. And I'll be late getting back."

"It's fine. Whatever. Go do whatever. You never signed up to entertain me 24/7 and it's not even like it's you I came here to see, so whatever. Really."

"If you say 'whatever' one more time I'm gonna go out of my mind."

She shrugged. "Whatever."

"Trouble—"

"Save it! Seriously. I get it. You have _something_ to do. So go do it and let me get on with my own night." She pushed away, broke out of his grasp and crossed the room to Jesse's side, sitting down on the floor beside him and mirroring his cross legged seat before picking up the other Play Station controller.

Vince watched as she shoved against Jesse's shoulder playfully when he quickly assigned her to be player two when she clearly thought she should have been player one. Jesse fell almost all the way to the floor sideways before he caught himself on his forearm, laughing. "Damn cuz, when'd you get so strong?"

"I told you already fool. I do the real work while your pansy ass designs shit on a computer screen."

Jesse grabbed one of her wrists and straightened out her arm. "But shit, look at those biceps. You sure you're still a girlie?"

"Wanna feel one of 'em cutting off your fuckin' airway? Keep it up."

"Testy cuz?"

"Nope. If you wanna play this game let's do it."

Rather than answer, Jesse popped the lid of the console closed, causing it to boot the CD resting on the spindle. When something called Medal of Honour loaded, Tempest groaned. "A military game? That's what you want me to play with you? Some first person shooter military game? Seriously?"

Jesse sputtered a moment. "But this game isn't even out yet. I hacked my way into the computer system of the production company and downloaded a beta copy to play!" Jesse caught the look his cousin was giving him. The one that clearly said 'so what?' "You have no respect for the fine use of computer systems and the internet."

"Oh, that's where you're wrong. I just don't think pirating some stupid game a few months ahead of its scheduled release is 'the fine use of the internet.' I've watched Angelo," the name flowed off her tongue in perfectly accented Italian, catching the ear of Vince, still sitting on the couch, and Dominic, lounging in his chair. "Use the internet and seen what he can do. I refuse to believe that stealing video games is the finest use of the internet."

"Fuckin' Angelo again," Jesse mumbled. "Fuckin' black hat cracker, making money off selling other people's information."

"He's not just makin' money. He's making major paper. And always has been."

"Just marry the guy already and stop talking about him like he's the king of the fuckin' world."

"Jesse," despite her cousin's obvious actual anger, it brought out his name with a laugh. It was an old, tired topic that they simply never allowed to die. "What's the big deal with the whole black hat, white hat, grey hat thing? Why shouldn't Angelo make his money taking advantage of other people's stupidity? And I would marry him already, but he's never asked." It was a lie. Not that Angelo had never asked, though he never had, but that she would marry him if he did. She loved Angelo dearly, but both were well aware there was no romance between them and never had been. He'd already been at least twenty five when he'd met her fifteen year old self one summer day. He'd never told her his age and refused to do so, no matter how often she asked since but she had known from the day they met when she was barely a teen that he was already an adult in every sense.

Angelo had loved once, in his own country, in Italy, and had loved this woman so deeply and so truly that the day she died, his desire to love a woman in that romantic way died with her and had never been resurrected. To get away from her memory and his past even at his young age he'd given up everything he'd ever known and moved to Canada to start over. And for the most part he had. But he'd never rediscovered a desire to date again. So while she was confident of his love for her, Tempest knew it was a plutonic love, that she was seen as the sister he'd never had. Angelo would take care of her for the rest of her life, or his, but he would never fall in love with her. And that was fine. She didn't feel that way about him either. But it suited her to make Vince think she might, if Angelo did too.

She figured she'd accomplished her goal when she heard him get up off the couch, his footsteps heavier than normal, because he was angry with her she knew. She was annoyed with him, so that was fine.

"Fine, you don't want to play this game we'll try this one." Jesse got up and switched the CD in the PlayStation. When it reloaded the splash screen for a game called 'Driver' filled the TV display.

"This isn't out yet either," Tempest pointed out. "Not til next month."

"I know. I acquired it too."

"Not another word about Angelo. He could find this stuff too, if he gave a care."

"What do you see in that guy? He's old enough to be our dad."

"J, I might not know just how old he is, but he's not old enough to be my dad."

"There's only one reason why a guy that old keeps a girl like you around."

One of Tempest's manicured brows rose into her hairline. "Oh? Do tell."

Catching the look on her face, Jesse refused to answer. He just shut his mouth into a mutinous line that clearly revealed he'd love to have the guts to say more, and hit start on the controller in his hand.


	64. Of Secret Friends and Blue Streaks

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By - _TempestRaces_

Chapter 64 – **Of Secret Friends and Blue Streaks**

Managing to lose herself with Jesse in the game for what felt like hours, vaguely aware of the normal ebb and flow of an evening in the Toretto household occurring around them, the doorbell was quite abrupt enough to knock Tempest out of the artificial world of cars and octane she and Jesse were living in. However, both figuring that there was no way anyone had come to see them, the pair kept on racing each other, Jesse trying to catch up to his cousin's slight lead.

When Tempest heard her name being said by whoever was at the door, opened by Dominic, her attention was swiftly taken off the TV screen. Everyone she truly knew was inside the house, with the exception of Vince. Who would be at the door asking for her? Before she could spend any more time attempting to puzzle it out on her own, Dominic moved back and looked at her. "Someone here for you," he rumbled out, obviously annoyed at the necessity of speaking to her.

She got up with a puzzled frown, making her way toward the door and adjusting her sweats around her hips as she stood.

"How do you go from _that_ to fine?" Bryce asked from his position on the porch once she appeared in the doorway. His comment was clearly meant to include her very casual dress and messily restrained hair.

She cocked a hip sideways and leaned on the doorjamb. "I'm in playing vid games with Jess for the night. How fine do I need to be?"

"For that? Not very. For what you're actually going to be doing? You at least need to wear jeans."

"That is what I'm doing. I haven't got any other plans."

"No, you _didn't_ have any other plans. You do now." Bryce invited himself into the foyer, pushing past her. "Go change your clothes."

"I don't know what you're up to. But I'm not going anywhere." Tempest was still very pissed off with Vince and fully intended to take that out on his friend in lieu of being able to take it out on the real thing.

"If I have to take you downstairs, find your shit and change you myself I will, but you are coming with me. So go do it yourself and pick the easy way."

"What'd you care what I do tonight?"

"I've just decided I do. So go put some jeans on, maybe a nicer shirt and meet me out front."

"I'm only gonna be down here for another two days. What makes you think I have to do what you say?"

"Cause I'm betting you know I'm serious when I say I'll drag you down there and change you myself if you don't do what I asked. And I'm betting you don't want to have that happen in front of these people, or have to explain who I am and how you came to know me."

"He'd kill you if he knew you were here, wouldn't he?" The bond between Vince and Bryce was tangible at times, and Tempest knew that if this was the first time the rest of the team was meeting Bryce—and it clearly was given by the confused and puzzled looks on their faces regarding who her large and leather clothed guest was—there was a good reason that Vince had never had him around for a happy little family bbq.

Bryce made an unconcerned face, brushing off her concern. She didn't give an inch. "He'd try," he finally answered on a shrug, admitting the answer to her unvoiced query about whether or not Bryce and Vince's family knew about each other was 'no'. "Go, get ready, come back here."

"Fine," she grumbled, giving in. "But I'm only going with you for an hour, tops. And I'm only doing it so that I don't have to see a huge brawl in the living room when you try to make me do something I don't want to do and Leon takes a big exception to it."

"Whatever you say, doll."

Tempest headed for the kitchen and Bryce leaned against the wall by the stairs, studying the people in the living room. He'd heard a lot about these people Vince lived with, but had never met them. Vince was very careful to keep his two lives separate, and Bryce even got why. But that didn't mean he'd never been curious. He made Dom, Mia and Letty right off, easily fitting them into the details Vince had let drop over the years. He knew he only got which of them was Jesse so easily because he was the one sitting on the floor with the game pad in his hand. Which left the other one to be Leon by the simple process of illumination. The infamous 'did she or didn't she' partner. He could tell his scrutiny was making them all uncomfortable, which made it even more worthwhile to be here risking the wrath of his friend. Their discomfort was amusing.

Finally, after a period of time he was sure she stretched out to stick it to him, Tempest reappeared upstairs, newly attired in a pair of indigo blue jeans and a black undershirt, her hair now curling down her back instead of knotted on the back of her head messily. There was a decidedly cranky look on her face. "I'm going out," she called into the living room. "I don't intend to be long."

"Where you going?" Jesse called back.

"I dunno. But where ever it is, I won't be there long," Tempest insisted, looking directly into Bryce's eyes as she did so. He only shrugged at her insistence.

"Put this on," he ordered, handing her a leather jacket after shrugging out of it himself.

"Why? It's not cold out."

"Because I said so," Bryce answered, clearly losing patience with her brat act. He pulled the door open and pushed Tempest out it, pulling it closed behind himself. Once they were on the porch he tossed the jacket around her shoulders. "Arms in. You have to have more than an undershirt on."

"Why?" Tempest asked again, nearing the end of her patience.

"Just in case due to someone else being stupid, we crash."

"What's a jacket got to do with—," She trailed off when she spotted the sapphire Harley at the curb. "You want me to get on that with you?"

"Yep. You're gonna get on that with me." As her arms were finally inside the sleeves of his coat, he leaned forward a touch and started to do up the zipper.

"I don't do motorcycles. Least, not on one with someone else."

"Maybe you didn't, but you do tonight."

"Why do you get to tell me what I do tonight?"

"Cause I know what's good for the pair of you better than you do yourselves," Bryce mumbled. "I just do." He dragged her down the walk to the curb where the bike was leaning on its kickstand.

"I'm not riding on the back of this thing!"

"Why the fuck not? I'm good at it. It's perfectly safe. I'll even go slow if it'll make you feel better."

"Yeah, slow'll make me feel better." She rolled her eyes to illustrate how ridiculous that sounded. "I just don't do motorcycles."

"You've never ridden on one?"

"I have. And I will again, when I'm the one driving it. I do not and will not ride on the back of one." Made her feel too out of control of her fate, though she didn't intend to share that with Bryce.

"Come on Doll. It's the only ride I own. And no, I won't ride in your car." Bryce insisted the second he saw her mouth go to open, before he tossed his leg over the seat of the bike and settled comfortably onto the leather. "I'll make it amusing for you, I promise." He looked up at her and she still didn't look convinced. "Nothing—well almost nothing—else you could do right now would piss Vince off worse than finding out you got on this bike with me." She was on the seat behind him so fast it actually moved them sideways a bit as he wasn't ready for it.

"Why didn't you say so in the first place?"

She said it so seriously he started to laugh and couldn't stop for a good two minutes. He just leaned over the handlebars and laughed til tears ran down his cheeks. The two of them were so hard headed. They deserved each other. He finally got himself in check and handed her a helmet. He watched over his shoulder as she put it on and then put his own on. Hers covered her whole head while his was just a minimal cap on his head. He'd rather not even wear one, but it seemed like the smart thing to do. And he wouldn't let her ride without being well protected. He might not ever be scared of Vince, but if anything happened to miss Trouble, he knew he was as good as dead. "Hold on. Let's go."

"Where we goin anyway?" If he answered her, his words were lost to the throbbing beat of a twin cam two stroke springing to life under the leather seat and shining blue gas tank. He shrugged to fill in the blanks, leaving her sure his verbal answer had been something along the lines of 'never you mind.' She rolled her eyes inside her helmet. Bryce was almost too like Vince for comfort. They were so alike, telling her she didn't need to know or she'd find out when it was good for her to know. She was good at doing on her own and was getting tired of some man telling her that he knew what she wanted or needed better than she did herself. Taking a deep breath she reminded herself she was leaving on Sunday or Monday at the latest, and that was only two more days to put up with it. The thought didn't fill her with as much relief as she thought it should. A sense of dark foreboding filled the area around her heart instead.

She shook it off with some effort and slid her arms around Bryce, holding on tight as he put the bike in gear and gave it throttle, letting off on the clutch, pulling away from the curb.

"Who the hell was that?" Leon asked the room in general.

"Dunno," Jesse answered with a shrug.

"Better question is how the hell did she meet the big bad biker dude in the less than two weeks she's been here?" Dom grumbled.

"Obviously through Vince," Letty answered with a roll of her eyes. "Who else could she have meant when she asked 'he'd kill you if he knew you were here'?"

"Guess so," Dom conceded grudgingly. "But if that's the case, who the fuck is that man that we've never met him, and Vince would kill him just for showing up here?"

The group shared a concerned look, each lost in puzzled thoughts for a moment or two before the lack of anything they could do about it settled in and they slowly each went back to doing their own things.


	65. Of Wild Rides and Being Multifaceted

AN: I did go and check if the ezboard is still around where I used to post this. It hasn't had a new post on it in several years, and the format of the old thread for this story is seven kinds of messed up. Sorry folks. I didn't ever think it'd take me so long to finish writing and posting it that it'd fall off the face of the earth. I have written several new pages! That is a breakthrough for me. I hope I can keep it up. Either way, here's the next chapter. And thanks to katbaby for taking the time to review almost every chapter as she/he read it. Much appreciated!

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 65 – **Of Wild Rides and Being Multifaceted**

On the way to where ever he was taking her, he lived up to his word. He made the ride quite interesting for her. She didn't let on to being nervous at any point, but it had been a long time since she'd been on a motorcycle and she wasn't sure if she liked it or not, at this point in her life. But she just held onto his waist and leaned back a bit, attempting to enjoy the wind blowing past her body as they flew. It was a different kind of reckless than she perpetrated in her car. More wild, less safe. Though perhaps due to the lack of safety equipment available on the bike, Bryce was more cautious on the road than she.

When they ended up at the same bar that she'd been to with Vince before, a puzzled frown filled her face. "What're we doing here?"

"This is where we're going."

"Why?"

"Do you ever just accept anything at face value, or must you question everything under the sun?"

"Well excuse me if the fact I told you I just wanted to stay home and you more or less forced me out of the house and onto your bike makes me question your motivations for doing it."

"I have something to show you."

"I've been shown this before."

"Not everything you haven't. Come on." He helped her off the bike and took her helmet from her hands, hanging it off the handlebar along with his own.

"All I wanted to do was spend Friday at home doing nothing," Tempest mumbled as she allowed herself to be dragged across the parking lot and into the bar.

"God you're bratty."

"Whatever," she answered in the same mumble. It was a sure fire sign she was getting frustrated with the situation to the point of shutting down about it.

Bryce just shook his head, never released his grip on her wrist. He propelled her into the bar, and into a back booth that the current occupants vacated the moment they saw him coming. Or perhaps when they saw the look on his face. Either way, the booth at the back of the smoky room was relinquished for their use.

Tempest threw herself down onto the vinyl padding with a sigh and looked up at Bryce. "Ok, now what?"

"Now I'm going to get you a drink and hope to god it puts you in a better mood."

"Better make it a double then," Tempest called after him as he walked away toward the bar. Bryce seemed to decide that his best option was nonresponsiveness. With a barely perceivable shake of his head he kept walking toward the bar.

Once he was underway, Tempest unzipped his jacket and shifted around on the vinyl seat to tuck her legs under her. She glanced around the room, not noticing anything different about the place this time from the last time she had been there. So she really had no idea why Bryce had insisted she get dressed over again when she'd been in for the night, let alone jump on the back of his bike and get dragged through the night to the same dive as she'd already seen. Really, seen the place once, you'd seen it enough.

She did note the addition of a stage to the front of the large room but didn't make too much of it. Bryce was back with a beer in one hand and a glass of something whose primary ingredient was coke before she could think about it too much. As he took a deep pull of the beer bottle on his way down to the seat opposite, Tempest assumed she was correct in assuming the other glass was for here. She picked it up when it was set in front of her and sipped on the straw. So, when you gonna tell me what I'm doing here?"

"Not. Just sit there quietly for a few and you'll figure it out."

"What? Can't get a date any other way but abduct one?" she teased, one eyebrow cocked in open invitation to have something to say.

"Like I'd have it in me to date you. I don't need a headache that bad."

"Guess it's a good thing I never found the motorcycle riding rocker dude type all that appealing then."

"We can only hope one outta two ain't bad," Bryce answered enigmatically, taking another drink from his bottle.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Bryce only shrugged in answer and Tempest fought a very real need to scream at him. She was the brat?

"Wish you looked your age. I find it hard to remember that you got a right to act like a spoiled brat on account of how you are one when you sit there looking old enough to be up in here legally and shit."

"'Scuse me?"

The icy cold tone of the question made him check himself. Had he stepped over some line in the sand? He answered the question with 'um' and waited to see what would happen next.

"You don't know shit all about me. Don't sit there an judge me like you got some call. Fuck you."

"What's not to know? You show up in a car worth more than some people make in a year, drop all the cash you want. You must have something to flash around with. Given you're what, 18, it musta came from somewhere and I doubt it was from a job."

"For your information I did save the money to buy the car from the almost full time job I worked all through high school. From the time I was 14 if you really must know. For your information I made the money to buy everything I have myself and the money I've been 'dropping' down here was all cash I earned racing and working for Harry. So fuck you. And I'm 19, practically 20."

"Jesus, my bad Trouble. Don't take my head off."

"Don't sit there and judge me like I've had some sort of fairytale life just because I have a nice car and took a vacation. Shit. What gave you the right to figure you know my whole history? Cause you talked to me for a sum total of two fucking hours in a few bars?"

Bryce simply shrugged and turned sideways on his seat so he could see the little makeshift dais at the front of the room. It was even worse than he thought. He liked the kid. The kid liked Vince, and the kid wasn't some spoilt princess slumming for the weekend either. Before he could have anything to say back to her the lights dimmed and a band walked out onto the stage and started fiddling with the instruments there.

"You dragged me out of the house to come watch amateur night at some shitty bar?" Clearly in an even more evil mood than before due to his imprudent words, the question was snarled in his general direction with a sneer.

"Kinda," he answered, shrugging. "Just try to kick back and enjoy it why don't you?"

"Whatever. I'm gonna go get myself another drink." She slid out of the booth and strode to the bar.

Bryce watched her go. Her walk was purposeful. She didn't look around. Just crossed the room and leaned on the bar. Walked back with the same purpose when she had drink in hand and slid into the booth opposite him again. "They're not bad. But I woulda rathered stay home."

"They're just the first. Hang in there."

"Your hour's almost up pal."

"Face it trouble, you ain't goin anywhere til I wanna take you, so you might as well settle in to enjoy the show, doll."

"Why do all ya'll macho types always think I can't take care'a myself without one of you? You think I can't find my way home without you? I do know how to use a telephone and a phone book. They're called cabs. I can take one. For that matter I can just call Jess or Leon to come get me."

"Yeah, but you'll have to go through me to do it."

"You say that like it's a problem of some sort." She shrugged.

He laughed, couldn't help himself. What an arrogant girl. No wonder Vince had a thing for her. "Just drink up and hold your fucking panties on for another ten minutes ok?"

She shrugged again, a one shouldered deference. "Who says I'm wearing any?"

He sputtered on a mouthful of beer before choking it down and laughing harder. She was so perfect for V it wasn't funny. Too bad he felt like the only one who could see it. She couldn't, V couldn't, it seemed like all the hot dogs Vince lived with couldn't either, coming between them, trying to stop the inevitable. He shut his mouth, still smiling even if he was shaking his head.

The current band finished up and the next one took the stage. Bryce looked over at Tempest to find her staring intently at one of his empty bottles which she was busy shredding the label off. Then the band on stage started to play and her head snapped up. Either she somehow recognized the playing or she was a Zakk Wylde fan.

"That sounds just like Zakk Wylde playing that guitar. Who covers Zakk Wylde songs?"

Well, that answered that. "Um. Doesn't look much like him though. Who do you think covers him?"

"Jesus, is that Vince up there?"

"Um." Again with a grunt in answer. He figured it was pretty rhetorical anyway. Given how much of Vince she'd seen in the last week, it had to be pretty obvious who it was.

"This is the thing he had to do?"

"Yeah." She seemed mad but she kept quiet, simmering in silence through several songs. The hour she'd agreed to stay was long since over.

"Why'd you take me here?"

Wow, she was really pissed. Bryce had to double check to be sure. She was pissed to the point of scratching someone's face off pissed. And it would seem she was that pissed with him. "Why not?"

"Because he didn't want me here. He said he had 'a thing.' He implied it was another thing like the thing I found you two doing before. He didn't ask me, he didn't tell me what he was going to do so he didn't want me here. Which means he didn't want to share this with me. And if he didn't want to ask me here I don't want to be here."

"Tough. Sit down and enjoy the show."

Something in his tone had her denim clad ass back on the vinyl seat in a flash, but she sat back down with a mutinous look his way, clearly still incensed. "He's good. Why would he keep this a secret from everyone else? I know Leon would enjoy this."

Bryce seemed to think for a moment about her question. "I guess because Vince keeps his life with the team and his life in the real world separate."

Tempest looked up at him. "So you're saying the life he has with my cousin, and Leon and Letty and Mia isn't real?"

The hurt in her eyes filled in 'with me' even if she left it unsaid. He sighed, unsure how to dig himself out of the female quicksand mire he found himself standing in. One foot wrong with women and you were fucked. And not in the way you wished for. "That's not what I mean. I guess this is just a side of who he is that he never decided to share with them."

"I'm leaving." She slid to the edge of the seat, prepared to stand. And then the band stopped playing and the lights came up. She stood beside the table, looking at Bryce in a mix of anger and something that might have been panic. Now she was basically caught and obviously didn't know what to do about it. He didn't have to wait long for the drama to play out. "Take me home, now," she ground out.

He'd never responded well to orders. Not from anyone. So if he'd intended to fill her in on that, at least she could have taken comfort in the fact it had nothing to do with her being a chick. And everything to do with him just not taking that kind of talk out of anyone at all. "There are things that need to be finished here."

"There are things that got started here by you and you had no right," Tempest growled in retort. She managed to mess around in her own life enough. She didn't need any help from outside third parties.

"You're making too big a deal out of this." They were so deep into their heated argument going on in hushed tones as he sat and she stood they never once broke eye contact to see Vince headed their way. It might have been better for them if they had, so they would have had time to prepare for how irate he was.


	66. Of Fast Cars and Anything but Easy

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 66 – **Of Fast Cars and Anything but Easy**

"What're you doin' here?" Vince asked in a growl, showing his question was directed to Tempest by grabbing her wrist in his free hand. The other was holding the handle of the case his guitar was in.

"I dunno." She wouldn't break her eye contact with Bryce to look his way.

"Really?" The banality of his tone belayed itself with the underlying tone of hostility.

"Ask your boy."

"I didn't ask my boy. I asked you."

She shrugged flippantly to cover her anger. "I don't have an answer for you so I guess you'll just have to deal."

"If I'd wanted you here, I'd have asked you to come."

"That's patently obvious."

"So why're you here?"

"Jesus Christ V. I brought her. I didn't tell her where we were going or why. I just went and got her and brought her."

Vince turned his hot gaze onto Bryce. "So that why she's wearing your jacket?"

"Yeah. We came on the bike."

Vince turned his look back on Tempest. "You got on the back of his bike? With him?"

"Generally how it's done V," Bryce answered for her.

"You? Shut up." Vince delivered in a tone that would have had pretty much anyone in the free world but Bryce cowering under the table. Bryce just held his hands up as if to say ok and backed off. For the moment. "You don't belong here. You belong at the fort. You're not part of what I do here." Always careful to keep his two lives very separate for reasons of his own, her presence started to blur the line and he didn't like it. He liked her at home with her cousin, with their friends. But he liked her _here_, sitting with _his_ friend too. Something had to be done to put things back in their place. "You're a step above a racer chaser for crying out loud. Like some racer attitude Barbie."

"For a good time, call, huh? Kinda what I figured. I'm a caricature to you. Not a whole person but an over-exaggerated drawing of an easy girl in a fast car. Go fuck yourself." She shrugged out of the heavy leather coat she was still wearing and tossed it on the bench which essentially tossed Vince's hold on her as well, before with her final parting shot she took off for the door. Bryce made a grab for her arm and missed, and they watched her disappear into the murky night as the door snapped shut behind her.

"What the fuck did you bring her here for?" Vince growled. He couldn't believe how poorly this had ended, and it was all Bryce's fault.

"Because you didn't," Bryce answered simply, shrugging slightly.

"Ever stop to think there mighta been a reason for that?"

"I figure you had one. I also know it was a stupid one so I over ruled you."

"My life is _my_ life."

"Yeah, but you're fucking it up. And you're fuckin that kid up too. So that's why I started to give a care. You're just pissed off because now she might know you're human and not some super callous thug that drives too fast and drinks too much and snaps her in half for fun when he wants to." There was a challenge in Bryce's eyes. Vince knew without a doubt it wouldn't go unanswered. He'd either respond now or later, and later it would be even more at Bryce's convenience.

"I don't snap her in half for fun." He ran a hand through his disordered hair. "I can't seem to help it. Scares the shit outta me."

"I know," Bryce stood up in preparation for leaving, and threw an arm around Vince's shoulders in a brotherly way. "It's supposed to, you know?"

"Meeting a girl is supposed to scare the shit outta me?" Vince looked at his friend incredulously.

"No, meeting _the_ girl is supposed to. You're just supposed to be happier to have found her than you are scared to have found her, you know? Too bad you're too thick to get the order right. Now go find her."

"What'd you mean go find her? She'll take her car and run home."

Bryce pulled a pensive face. "Gotta figure you'd be right if she had her car. Came with me on my bike, remember?"

"Fuck me," Vince growled. "Headstrong fucking female. Do you have any sweet clue how far she might have gotten by now?"

"How far could she honestly get on foot V?"

"Far as she wants." Vince shook his head. "I guess I better get after her." He left Bryce with one last look, a look that conveyed he was by no means done being pissed as hell with his friend. That he was simply letting it go for the sake of tracking down the pissed off package of trouble that had somehow become his responsibility. He looked all around the parking lot before getting in his car and driving around all the side streets within a ten minute run. He never found her. But when he found one of the little lit street side shelters for the bus, he had an epiphany and started cussing up a storm. Of course the she devil had hopped on the first bus that had gone by and was by now god only knew where.

He drove home, hoping that she would have by some chance found the bus that would drop her off close to the house. Her car was still at home, but a quick check of the house showed no sign of her. He retreated back out into the night. An oppressive atmosphere had developed over the course of the evening. The previously sunny, dry and hot day had become a muggy and overcast night, heavily weighted with moisture on the air and the smell of an impending storm of some proportions being blown around by a swiftly rising wind.

He headed off down the street with a squeal, no idea where he was going. If she had, as he figured, hopped on a bus, she could be anywhere. So where would she go if not home to either hide behind Leon, or take her car and run elsewhere? Following an instinct he wasn't even aware of, he turned the car toward the little stretch of beach the whole team figured they had the monopoly on. It wasn't a plan to find her there; far as he knew she wouldn't even know how to find her way back there. But he had a desire to be alone, to growl to himself, and it was as good a place as any. Plus, in his mind she was storms and sand, wind and waves. Violent light shows and fast motion, loud noise. Even if he never dreamed that he was doing anything that would lead him to her consciously, he was being dragged by an unseen force to the place that would feel the most like her.

So it came as quite a shock when he went to pull into the small gravel parking area to find himself looking down at the ocean to find a lone figure on the beach. "Son of a bitch," he mumbled, looking at the sky through his closed sunroof. "Trying to tell me something you son of a bitch?" He would believe in coincidence to a certain extent, but this was pushing it.

There was no moon, its light snuffed by the thick and smothering weight of the clouds heavy with rain and nature's repressed rage. But there was enough ambient light from the city lights down the strip to illuminate dimly the woman standing up to her knees in the water, hands holding the heavy fall of her rebellious hair up off the nape of her neck and out of the wind as the ocean soaked up her jeans, licking around her knees in waves growing more obvious as the weather kicked up more little by little. "Crazy chica. Gonna get herself killed if that lightning comes while she's still standing in the fuckin water," he growled to himself before getting out of his car and slamming the door. The wind carried the noise of the latching panel away toward the road, not granting the oblivious girl any hint of his presence, and in doing so seemingly laughing, as if to say 'you get no help from me, you're on your own.'

With a heartfelt sigh, he started down the sand toward where the frothing water licked at the damp shore.

Tempest felt her hands tangled in the silk of her hair, she felt the wind across her face, neck. Scented with salt water spray, sand and ocean flora. Felt the mist of ocean water drying on her skin, leaving a slightly gritty feeling in its wake as a salt and sand wash was left behind. She felt the water sucking at her feet, creeping up her pant legs with a cold caress that was most ominous. The ocean wasn't friendly at night with a storm brewing. It was cold and cruel and waiting to claim her if she just stepped out of line slightly. She could feel the cunning, knew it was waiting for her to step too far out, find her feet pulled out from under her as the undertow sucked her out to into the vast darkness, sucked her under with no one the wiser. She'd come here by accident. No one knew where she was. No one would miss her until later, when Vince showed up home without her, inquired where she was, and everyone realized they had simply assumed she was with him.

She tipped her head back and looked up at the grey clouds rolling over her head. They had a luminous, alive quality that the sky took on right before a storm to end all storms broke. Clouds more platinum than grey, shining with silver linings that did not hint at new beginnings or happily ever afters but at destruction and chaos instead. She knew she should get out of the water before the lightening hit. She just didn't care that much.

The ocean was home. The ocean was familiar. She lived her life surrounded by it. It was a constant. Anywhere she went, she knew that within ten minutes she could be close to it. Its cruelty wasn't for show, it wasn't to hurt anyone. It was just its nature. She understood the ocean. It was presently the one thing she was sure of. She released her hair, tipped her head back and closed her eyes. Wondered what on earth she had gotten herself into. The first drop of rain hit her face with a wet plop, to be followed quickly by another. The wind took her freed hair and whipped it around her face, slapping her cheeks just enough to be irritating. With her eyes closed against the rain. she simply stood, telling herself the next second would be the one that saw her leave the water, call Jesse to get a ride, head for home.

Seconds followed on the heels of the ones previous and she never made a move to leave her place. Slowly her hair got soaked, rain water ran down her cheeks and her under shirt got plastered to her damp skin rather than billowing around her in the wind, yet there she stood, still unwilling to do anything about it. Unwilling to call her cousin with the phone she was sure was rapidly being ruined by the weather as it rested in the back pocket of her pants, and admit that yet again, she had let Vince in only to watch him drop her and again refuse to be there to pick up the pieces.


	67. Of Stormy Nights and Driving Rain

**AN: I would like to take a moment to recommend the revamped version of Knights on the Blacktop which you will find posted in The Fast and The Furious section. It was good the first time around and I promise it's even better now. Go check it out and feel free to leave a review!**

**Thank you to all the people who are still with this story and leaving feedback. Reviews are always welcome, even when they're totally pointless and asinine. Just to be clear, I know to a list of 3 who you are, don't care what you do or say or who you impersonate next and I won't be going anywhere any time soon, so really all you're managing is amusing me and wasting your own time. But as its your time to waste, fill your boots :D **

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 67 – **Of Stormy Nights and Driving Rain**

Vince stood at the water's edge. Was he seriously going to wade out there and get her? Or was he going to just call her name and make her come to him? Would she come, or push out farther if confronted by him? _Fuck it, I better go get her_, he thought with a sigh. The answer was obvious if you knew her at all. She'd refuse to come in or go out further. He bent down, started to untie his boots. That done, he pulled them off, and his socks for good measure, stuffing them down inside his shoes. No sense ruining his boots _and_ his pants, he figured with a shrug. He briefly thought about taking his jeans off too, but it was too much work. He waded into the surf, cussing softly under his breath at the sting of the cold water.

He made his way out behind her, figuring she'd hear him coming a mile away, sloshing through the waves. The sound of the crashing water and howling wind must have been enough to cover the noise he was making however, because she never let on she knew he was there, that she was no longer alone.

He stood there behind her as the rain started, watched the drops pepper her face, spiking her lashes and running in rivulets down her wet cheeks.

"You ever gonna say anything, or just stand there like a dumbass all night?"

There went his idea she didn't know he was there. "When did you know I was here?"

"When you sloshed through the surf like a two tonne elephant."

"What if I wasn't me? What if it was someone else? You wouldn't even have a half second head start."

"I knew it was you."

"How? How could you have known it was just me?"

She shrugged. "I did."

"How could you have?"

"I just did. What do you want?"

"You to smarten up and get the fuck outta the water in the middle of a lightning storm, for starters."

"Not lightning yet."

"Maybe not yet, but it's gonna."

"I know." She always knew. She could feel it. Smell it long before it ever really started. From the first drop of rain, before, if a storm was going to include a light show, she knew.

Maybe it was because she'd been born in the middle of a terrible storm. Maybe it was her overly acute sense of smell—secretly how she'd known it was Vince sneaking up behind her—she didn't really know the why's. She moved to slide her cell phone out of her back pocket.

"What are you doing?"

She finally opened her eyes, turned to face him. "What do you think? I'm calling Leon for a ride home." She knew she used Leon to get her own back at him just a little. Jesse was too easy. She knew that Vince didn't see any competition in Jesse.

"I'm right here. I'll take you home." Her eyes reflected the weather, and the water. More green than blue and more grey than green, they reminded of clouds and ocean.

"You say that like I have any intention of getting in a closed in space with you."

"You know, I never said any of that stuff. You said it all."

"Oh? And what gave me that idea?" She watched as he disordered his shaggy hair with an agitated hand. "I don't think you can claim you never said anything. Racer Attitude Barbie?"

He cringed. "I said something stupid. I wasn't thinking."

"Again."

"Again," he agreed.

"Fine, let's get outta here." She was too tired, too wet and too weary to argue with him anymore. And it was too late to drag Leon out of the house into a storm and into the middle of a storm of an entirely different sort just over her not wanting to take a twenty minute car ride with Vince. She started around him for the shore, sloshing through the water as she waded in. She heard him following on her heels, his larger feet kicking up more water than hers.

After stopping to snatch up his boots, he matched his pace to hers across the wet sand, a map of dimpled impressions from the pounding rain giving it an uncommon texture under their feet as they walked across the ribbons of sand the waves had made, and then revealed as the last high tide had receded. Twin footprints marked path from waves to shore, one set more narrow with a higher arch, the other larger and flat, clearly male and female, yet showing a stride of equal length, even as the female pair walked around the worst clumps of sea vegetation and the male walked right through. And both were before long washed away by the rain and surf.

They reached the car and paused at the nose. "We're going to drag half a beach worth of sand and seaweed into the car." Vince tried to make it more statement than complaint. He wasn't sure how well he succeeded, but he didn't want her to think he was complaining about driving her home, no matter how much sand came with her.

"You have towels or a sheet or something in the trunk?"

"No, why would I?" He looked at her like she was crazy.

"In case you end up at the beach, and require a towel."

"My trunk is full of stereo equipment."

"Still woulda had room for a towel," Tempest mumbled.

"One towel wouldn't get us very far anyway. We'd need about three just to dry your hair. Never mind the fact that both of us are soaked, and at least to the thighs with salt water and sand." And they were only getting wetter, he had to note, standing in the rain in the dark parking lot.

If he was that concerned about sand in his car, she certainly wasn't going to add to the mess, and have to hear about it later. She'd walk til she could catch another bus. She walked around him, and started down the road.

"Where you going?" he asked even as he caught her hand to stop her walk.

"Bus. I doubt the city of L.A. cares how much sand I drag onto a bus."

He rolled his eyes, glad she couldn't see him doing so in the dark. "I didn't say anything about the sand to imply I was upset you were going to be dragging it into the car. I have just as much on me." He wanted to be angry that she took his words so out of context. But given what he'd said to her an hour previous was much worse, and she hadn't taken it as far out of context as he'd led her to believe, he held his tongue.

She looked back over her shoulder at him as wind blew a tree sideways and let a street light illuminate their faces. She was clearly still upset, and confused, and he knew it was his fault, again. He tugged her backwards with the grip he still had on her wrist. He knew he must have caught her unaware for a moment, as she fell back into him with a slightly startled exhale. Before she could struggle to get away he wrapped an arm around her waist to hold her steady and used the other to gather her wet hair into a tail behind her head so he could lick up the side of her neck. "You're covered in salt water."

She closed her eyes tightly, telling herself it was against the pounding rain, not allowing it to be as some measure of defence against what he was doing to her senses with actions as simple as standing behind her in a dark parking lot and taking a taste of her skin, when she was more covered now than she'd been likely since her arrival, in her undershirt and jeans.

Wondering what had her eyes pressed so tightly shut, whether it was desire, or the complete lack of, Vince wasn't sure what to do with her from where he found himself. Was she waiting for him to take this further, or wishing he would release her and let her walk around his car and get into the dry interior. Deciding with the amount he'd pushed his luck already in one evening, a little push more wouldn't hurt anyone. He leaned over her shoulder again and ran his tongue along the outter rim of her ear, ending with a soft scrape of his teeth across her earlobe. He took it as a good sign when she leaned back into him willingly, rather than standing stiffly where he'd tipped her with his well timed tug.

Tempest had no idea what she was doing. What she was thinking, allowing him to have his hands and mouth on her body again, after what he'd said to her in the bar? After what that implied about how he saw her, why he was still with her. She could only hope that it was based on some instinct she had that he was just rebelling against feeling as strongly for her as she did for him.

"You fit into both places. With Bryce and at home, and it bothered me, because I don't want you to. I don't want you to fit in. Not into my whole life." He didn't know where the words came from, but for once he didn't regret admitting to his feelings on a subject. He had to take what he had said in the bar back, and she deserved to know what had driven him to say something so harsh and untrue.

"How can I fit into your life? I don't fit into my own! And the day after tomorrow I'm going to have to go home and try to make me fit into my own world all over again." She sighed.

Maybe because he simply wanted to, and maybe to stop any further reminders of how soon they would be separated by two countries, when she reminded them both out loud how soon their time would come to an end, he tipped his head down, tilted hers to the side and tipped her chin up to kiss her. Maybe because she also didn't want to think about her departure any further she met him half way, her lips parting under his to allow him to deepen the contact, a hand sliding across the side of her face to tangle in her wet hair and hold her gently in position.

After a moment she turned to face him, pressing against him fully and twining her arms around his neck. She figured once a girl reached a certain level of stupid, another little bit wouldn't change much. She wasn't sure if allowing things to carry on after she felt his hands under her shirt wasn't more than a little stupid, but she still didn't call a stop to what they were doing, whatever it was. Before she knew it her shirt was in a wet pile on the hood of the maxima and cold rain water was pinging against her bare skin. She still didn't break away, call a halt. More the fool her, she wanted this more than she wanted to be smart.

He pulled his own t-shirt off, and it joined hers in a wet pile on the hood of his car. The rain lashed at them both, but if she was aware of it, he certainly wasn't. Grabbing her with both hands, he lifted her up onto the hood, sitting her on his car near the front edge, her feet dangling in front of the bumper.

She took grip of his wet hair and pulled his head down, putting his lips back against hers.

He pushed her back onto the hood, followed her down, never breaking contact but running wet hands up her body.

She echoed the gesture, nails grazing his skin in her haste. It was foolish, and foolhardy and she didn't care, didn't even realize at the time she was setting herself up for another fall. All that mattered was the contrast of cold, wet metal at her back, and scalding hot male on top of her, highlighted all around by the lashing of the rain on them both. Neither noticed, and had either stopped to think about the rain, they might have wondered why it wasn't sizzling off their overheated skin in billows of steam.

Thunder cracked, lightning flashed, and in the brief flashes in the inky darkness, human skin took on a delicate cast of blue. The wind and crashing waves carried away the sounds they were making almost frantically in the otherwise dark night, until all was quiet and still but the thunderous ruckus nature was creating.

And surrounded by the most elemental of situations, wind, water, sand, and even fire he was ashamed. Cliché as it was, she was the four watchtowers and in his own need to control an uncontrollable situation he constantly disregarded the magic of her for his own piece of mind. And he still wasn't able to find any. She was a witch, full of black magic, and he had no talisman against her, didn't want one.

He stood, took a moment to admire the look of her skin as lightning hit the water and made her glow against the ink of his car in the dark night. Then he held a hand down to her, to help her to her feet. After a second of watching her try to work her sodden denims back up her legs, he busted up laughing and it broke the mood of being alone in a room made of rain. Brought them both back to reality, and she joined him in laughter.

"I'd love to know what you think I'm going to do about this?" she tried to be serious.

He picked his tee shirt up off the hood, and rung it out like a wet dish towel before handing it over to her. "This should fit you like a dress."

"And you're going to do what then?"

He shrugged. "My jeans aren't as tight." He waited until she'd worked her way into the sodden cotton shirt with a shiver before dragging her around to the passenger side door. "Now go get in the car before you get sick."


	68. Of Being Different and Defining Normal

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 68 – **Of Being Different and Defining Normal**

**AN: I am among the apparent few who thought the fourth movie was almost all garbage. I didn't really like it. I laughed a few times, but I felt a lot of it was just poor. **

They drove home, and managed to get downstairs without being seen by anyone straggling in like drowned rats half dressed. They went to bed, and Vince expected to be lulled into sleep quickly by the driving rain on his window, but he wasn't. He gave up on sleeping after several hours of tossing and turning next to her still form. His issues with sleep were clearly not hers as well. Despite being deprived of her common resting place against his side by his unrestive conduct; she was deeply unaware of his unrest. She made soft, yet content noises as she breathed deeply and rhythmically in the arms of Morpheus, curled on her side with a hand under her cheek, the other holding the blanket securely under her chin.

He rolled onto his side to watch her. At first to be irate that she was sleeping so peacefully while he was awake, and not happy about it at all. But it was hard to stay mad watching something so calm. He felt sure she was dreaming, as her eyes flicked from side to side behind closed lids and he couldn't help but wonder of what she dreamt. Was it of him? Or of fame and notoriety on the streets?

These thoughts made him realize that he really didn't know her well enough to speculate on what else she might dream of in the night.

Did she dream of a home and family? He knew she had her own place to reside, but that was just a house. Did she dream of a home with a fence and kids in the yard? Or was that simply something he envisioned women dreaming of? Something he had never known, and thus didn't know how to put in his own dreams of the future, let alone if he actually wanted it or not?

She had no responsibility to anyone other than herself and her dog, but was that by choice, or just the lack of other options presenting themselves? Or was she too young yet to even contemplate the alternatives to her single life.

And why was he thinking about all of it now, when she was due to leave as soon as tomorrow? What made him contemplate what she might want for her future, and what he might, and how the two might mesh _now_, when it was practically too late to do anything about it? Was that why it was ok tonight? Because it was a safe topic at this late stage? Because there was nothing that could be done to change the outcome now, no matter the answers to his hypothetical questions? Because by the day after tomorrow she'd be nothing but a ghost of a smile and a whiff of a foreign scent on his pillow?

They awoke mutually the next morning to the sound of Dominic yelling at them through the closed door while he pounded on it. "Both of you get the fuck up and get dressed. We got all our own shit to do before tonight and about 10 cars to clear out of the shop before dinner. You wanna eat tonight you can get the _fuck_ up and help." It was clear Dom was not amused to yet again know they were sleeping in the same room. Forgone conclusion or not.

Vince groaned before rolling over to look at the clock. 10am flashed in his face in cheerful red numbers. "Fuck me."

"What time is it?" Tempest moaned unhappily.

"Ten."

"Oh fuck off!"

"He'll be back in 10 anyway. Might as well get up as listen to him every 10 minutes for the next half hour."

"Why do I count against his staff list? He generally goes out of his way to let me know he doesn't rate my mechanical skills." Tempest sneered. "I'm going back to sleep."

"No you ain't. If I have to get up, and Jess has to get up, and Leon has to get up, so do you."

She capitulated with a sigh. "Fine, but I'm not going anywhere until I get a hot shower." The rain had snarled her hair into a rat's nest.

"You better go now and be quick then. I'll go after you but I'm only giving you 10 to be finished."

"Fine," Tempest got up and headed out of the room, a pair of towels tossed over her arm. By the allotted ten minutes later she was back in Vince's room rubbing a towel through her hair. "You gonna get ready or what?" she asked Vince.

"Yeah, I'll meet you upstairs, yeah?"

"Yeah, fine." Vince left the room and Tempest got dressed. She pulled on the first wifebeater she found in her bag, and a pair of jean shorts before donning thick wool socks and shoving her feet in her boots before, leaving the laces hanging, clomping upstairs. She found everyone but Vince sitting around the table waiting for breakfast. She pulled out a chair and reversed it before straddling it, arms resting on the back.

"Thought Vince told you that you were coming down to help out?" Dom growled.

Mia put a bowl of cereal in front of Tempest. "He did," she answered before smiling in thanks at Mia for the breakfast.

"You think that's suitable clothes for working in a shop?"

Tempest looked down at herself mockingly. "My boots got steel toes. What more'd ya want?"

To the surprise of everyone, Dom let it go with a sigh and nothing more said then, "if you burn the shit outta yourself you got no one to blame."

"Yeah dad I get it," she answered with a roll of her eyes.

Dom frowned as he watched Letty try not to laugh out loud and ultimately fail. If his girlfriend liked Tempest, and Leon more than liked her, and Jesse was related to her, and Mia and Tempest seemed to be coming around to each other, and Vince was so head over heels in love with her everyone but Vince knew it already, how could he continue to try and stand in the way of her deciding to stay? He couldn't, was the only answer. But damn he wanted her to go home, and let his carefully arranged life outside prison go back to normal. But Letty didn't like very many chicks, so that had to say something big.

Before he could say anything else, Vince joined the table, Mia started dishing out the food for the morning carnivores, and saying anything else was lost in the rush to get fed, cleaned up and out of the house.

On his way to the shop, Dom couldn't help but ponder. What if his carefully orchestrated normal never returned? Not even after she left? If Vince didn't get over her as quick as Dom figured he would, if he mooned and got depressed and testy, life would be worse than normal. She wouldn't have to work for him. He could find her a job with someone else, much as it'd kill him to give good talent away. Not that it'd kill him any less to admit to her he knew she was talented. Could he actually bring himself to give a female Jesse to another garage? He doubted it. So not only would he have to resign himself to her dating his best friend—his brother—he'd have to work with her every day too. He didn't think he could do it, but he didn't see how he could not.

He decided that her job for the day could be an audition of sorts. She'd mostly pasted all his tests, not that he'd ever tell her that. But if he was going to put a job offer to her, tell her she was welcome to stick around, he had to be sure of her mechanical skills. Because he'd never be sure of her personality. Something about her rubbed him too far wrong. Something to do with how alike they could be, how dangerous it could be, when their control slipped a little. If she stayed, she and Vince would have to get their own place, he couldn't live with her and work with her. Oh man, he was talking about her staying. But when he thought about how much more level Vince was with her around, it made sense. Which didn't mean he had to like it. But he had to figure that Vince saw his opinion of Tempest as a big reason why he wasn't willing to put his neck out and ask her to stick around. So he owed it to his friend to correct the girl's assumption he wouldn't allow her to stick around.

When he pulled into the shop lot and saw her dressed in a black 'beater knotted around her waist and a pair of denim cut off shorts he began to change his mind. Who worked on cars like that? Then when he looked around just how much was waiting on them to get done by 3pm thoughts of anything but handing out jobs left his head.

"Letty, grab the keys to the blue Supra. Some sort of knocking noise, check it out. Leon, there's something electrical up with the injectors on the yellow Civic, it's yours. Jess, there's a turbo and manifold going on that Mitsubishi Eclipse, Vince, water pump change on that black MX-3," Dom gave Vince a nasty look for interrupting him when Vince started to moan about how the water pump was behind the timing belt, "Tempest, there's oil in the coolant on that Grand Am, I know GM is your specialty so you can check into that one, and I'll take the power lacking Golf." Tempest gave him a dirty look, knowing full well she was looking at an upper intake gasket, or a head gasket, or even both, and thus about 4 different tests just to not know if she was replacing one or both even after.

Tempest swung the late 90's Grand Am into her bay. She was already fairly confident it was going to be an upper intake gasket that had failed, but with 80 thousand on the clock, she also knew she was going to be recommending a head gasket change. To do it later would duplicate over half the labour she'd be doing anyway, so it only made sense to change it and eliminate it now. But she also knew to confirm upper intake she'd be compression testing a v-6 and getting to the rear passenger side spark plug hole was a bitch on the transverse v-6 and most mechanics didn't even bother changing it when they did a plug set.

She tuned into a playlist on her ipod and got to work, tuning out the rest of the garage and her surroundings. It might be a concern for health and safety that she couldn't hear a thing, but she didn't care. She did her best work in her own little world and her world had a soundtrack background.

She had five of the six sparks out of the block, lined up in cylinder order and was pondering if she was going to bother trying to get the sixth out now when she already had uneven readings on the other five and the heads clearly had to come off anyway when someone tapped her shoulder. She took her time looking around, watching for the results of her cylinder bleed down test on number four before she stood up and looked to see who was waiting. It was Vince, who made a motion beside his head indicating she should kill the music. She pulled the earphones out of her ears, "yeah?"

"Its lunch time. You stoppin to eat?"

Tempest stretched up and over, cracking her back which had a kink in the small due to being bent over under a hood for so long without a break. "Yeah, I need a drink."

Vince tucked a tendril of curling hair behind her ear. The rest had been messily restrained in a ball from which curls escaped all over on the back of her head. "You don't want a burger or a sandwich?"

"Yeah, I'll eat something, but I really need a god damn Pepsi more than I want my next breath." Tempest glanced back at the engine she was working on. "And to not have to pull the heads off this thing."

"You sure you have to?" Vince asked.

"Naw, thought I'd do it for shits and giggles." She rolled her eyes. "Generally when the cylinders don't hold pressure on the leak down test and have uneven compression across the whole rear bank, you're looking at head gasket problems. Unless in the almost two years since college I've forgotten everything I learned while I've actually been doing this job all day every day for those two years. Or this car is one of the rare ones that will need new piston rings with only 80k on the clock."

"I was just askin'."

"And I bet it'd go over real well if I started 'just askin' if you were sure you were doing _your_ job right."

She's made her point well enough. "We goin' out to eat or waiting to see what everyone else is doin'?"

She shrugged. "Whatever's quick. If I'm supposed to have this done today I don't have a lot of time."

"It's doubtful you're gonna have a head gasket changed in an afternoon."

"Depends what I find when I get it off. It generally is the upper intake that's gone on these, and you just change the head gasket while you're in there. This one's got uneven compression and its leaking out of a couple consecutive cylinders, so the head gasket might be gone between them too. But it's doubtful that the head needs to be planed. If we can get parts and it comes apart fairly clean, it's not a terribly long job."

"We're going to the cafe. You guys comin'?" Jesse called from the shop door, interrupting before Vince could speculate on the realism of Tempest thinking she could have the car back on the road in three hours.

"Yeah, we're coming," Vince called back.

Together they headed for the car, and both were surprised when she got into the Maxima without complaint or protest. They pulled up to the front of the little store, Letty and Tempest ending up side by side due to the parking choices of Vince and Letty. They walked into the little cafe together, Dom and Vince walking behind them.

"Hey guys," Mia said from behind the counter. "Lunch time already?"

"Yeah, days half over and the works only a quarter done," Dom answered on a sigh. "Means less time for getting our own vehicles ready for tonight."

"I'm sure it'll be fine," Mia reassured. "What do you all want to eat?"

Vince spoke up before anyone else could get a word in. "Cheeseburger and fries." He looked around for Tempest, found her at the cold drink display with Letty at the back of the room. "Temp what're you eating?"

"Ham sandwich, no crust, brown bread," she called back.

Vince looked at Mia. "You get that?"

One side of Mia's nose rose in a sneer of sarcasm. "I'm not stupid."

Dom saw Vince's mouth go to open with what he was sure would be a smart ass retort. "Think twice," he warned his friend.

Vince's mouth stayed shut, but mutiny flashed in his eyes. Clearly he wasn't happy about being stifled. Dom turned back to Mia. "Burger and fries please. Letty?!" he bellowed at his girlfriend. "Food!"

"Burger, fries," Letty roared back.

Mia rolled her eyes before putting five burgers on the little grill to cook and dropping a basket of fries to turn golden before taking two pieces of brown bread out of the bag. She knew without asking that Jesse and Leon wanted the same as everyone but Tempest. "Do you want anything on your sandwich?" Mia asked as Tempest sat down on the stool beside Vince.

"Butter, mustard and mayo," Tempest answered.

"Kinda defeats the point of brown bread and going all healthy with the sandwich if you're going to have butter and mayo doesn't it?"

Tempest looked at Vince. "This from someone who's having deep fried potato and grease dripping hamburger meat for the second day in a row?"

Vince shrugged. "Not like it's hurting my girlish figure is it?" He flexed his arm to show off a rather impressive bicep.

"And are you saying that I need to watch mine?"

"I know I'm stupid, but I ain't that stupid." Vince tapped his temple with a forefinger.

"Debatable," Letty answered, grinning.

Before anyone else could join the fray, Mia started setting plates in front of them all.

They left her what seemed like mere minutes later, leaving a wake of dirty dishes and decimated food in their wake. Then it was back to being hard at work in the shop. There was only two hours until their deadline to stop doing customer work and switch onto prepping their own vehicles for the night to come.


	69. Of Bittersweet Goodbyes and

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

Chapter 69 – **Of Bittersweet Goodbyes and the Beginning of the End**

The day was sweltering, and the hard work of stripping the intake off the Grand Am soon saw Tempest dripping sweat.

Looking up in the middle of stripping the water pump bolts off the side of the little four banger in the Mazda, Vince caught sight of her in his peripheral vision. The glimpse he'd caught was enough to have him drop everything he'd been doing just to stare. She'd stopped working for a moment after setting the upper plenum on the workbench beside her to have a pull of the Pepsi she'd insisted on bringing back from the cafe with her. Her neck arched back gracefully as she tipped her head back to drink. The cold bottle was sweating in the heat, and after taking a long drink, she rubbed the wet plastic across her shining forehead, her eyes closed in pure bliss as she felt the cool water drip down her overheated skin. Perspiration made the newly dark skin of her bare abdomen glow.

She was perfection. Even in cut off denims and Caterpillar work boots that were hanging open at the laces, and scuffed in the toes.

"You can tell her you want her to stay any time you want to you know," Dom's deep baritone gravelled out into his ear, shocking him out of his moment.

"Who says I want her to stay?" Vince growled, not happy to have been so transparent to his friend.

"You were standing there thinking she looks hot in a stained undershirt and wool socks with work boots and shorts," Dom arched a brow to add emphasis. "No one actually looks good dressed like that. You want her to stay." He didn't wait around to talk about it more, or hear any retorts, just walked away, having reluctantly given his blessing to something everyone knew he didn't really want.

Vince felt the panic mounting. Dom didn't want her around. It was like a fate worse than death. So what had he seen that had seen him actually humble himself to make that offer? It didn't matter. It wasn't happening. He'd made up his mind. He was not begging her to stay on his behalf. If she wouldn't offer to stay on her own, she could go home.

He glanced back at her, and found she was now watching him with a puzzled look on her face.

"What?" she mouthed.

He only shrugged in answer before forcing himself to go back to the engine of the Mazda. One thing was for sure. He was going to have to execute some damage control. And if Dominic was convinced he was in love with Tempest, it was going to have to be sooner than later.

Tempest went back to pulling the heads off the Grand Am with a shrug of her own. Lord only knew what was up with Vince. She wasn't going to figure it out if he wasn't going to tell her, that was for sure.

The air ratchet buzzed as she reversed the long head bolts out of the engine expertly, setting them aside even though they were torque to yield and couldn't be reused, they would need replacing. She was almost positive that the intake was the issue. But Dominic had told her she may as well do the heads while she was at it. He apparently didn't care that the difference was measured in hours she didn't have to give and money she wasn't sure some customer needed to spend. The first head came loose and she lifted it off, flipping it over onto the bench to see the underside, and the faces of the valves.

None of them looked burnt. She figured she'd check if it needed to be planed before she went any further. Something was causing the uneven compression. And that was when she found the crack. Cracked head, this car was not going back together anytime soon. She bit back a groan when she realized that meant she'd actually have to go seek out speaking to Dom. Her feet dragging she headed over to where he was working. "Grand Am needs at least one head," she mumbled.

"Fuck," Dom muttered. "You sure?"

"Unless you know how to make them work with a crack between 1 and three, then yeah I'm sure."

"Ok, never mind. He set his own tools down before calling into the shop, "ok people, might as well be quitting time. Get your own shit ready."

Cars in a fit state to be moved were put outside and the team's own rides were brought in. Tempest really had nothing to check. She didn't figure on racing anyway, and her car had just been gone over with a fine tooth comb after her stunt race with Dominic. She pulled it in anyway and put it up on a hoist, checking over the suspension and tires for something to do. Everything was fine, and she settled the car back down onto its wheels. Kicking the hoist arms out from under it, she puzzled what she could do to kill time until it was time to leave. There was no point in doing anything with the Grand Am. Dom would need to tell the unlucky owner he was buying at least one new cylinder head and get it ordered up before they could do anything further.

She decided, on a whim, to drive down to the Racer's Edge and get her nitrous bottles filled. Maybe it wasn't likely that she'd get to race, but she should be prepared to say yes if she was asked. Because of Vince's strange mood, she decided she would only tell Jesse what she was doing and wandered toward where he was changing the oil in his Jetta. "I'm going to go get Harry to fill my spray. You want I should come back here after, or just meet ya'll at home?"

Jesse checked the time. "Meet us at home by the time you drive there and back again."

"Kay, see you in a couple hours then." Tempest walked away from her cousin with a wave and walked back to the Skyline. She opened the trunk and pulled a pair of flip flops out, chucked them on the shop floor and pulled her feet out of her heavy boots. She chucked the boots and her heavy socks into the trunk before slamming it shut and sliding onto the cool suede seat of her car. Once she was seated and belted in, she promptly kicked the flip flops off, preferring to drive bare foot than in sandals.

She started the car, backed it around and pulled out of the shop, the large bay door having been left open to try and scoop in some air that wasn't superheated into the interior. It hadn't worked but it was common practise in shops in summer, and she was glad for it. It meant no getting out of the car, no being asked by Dom or Vince where she was off to, just a clean escape. Something was up between Dom and Vince and just with Vince in general, and she had an instinctual feeling something involved her. She just wanted to be free of the drama for a while.

When she hit the parking lot, she turned the stereo on and up loud, Freak Nasty's Da Dip blasting out of the multitude of speakers fitted to the Skyline's sleek interior. She pushed her sunglasses up her nose and pulled the elastic out of her hair before she turned out of the parking lot, headed for the Racer's Edge, and already looking forward to its cool, air-conditioned interior. She drove competently there, having become familiar with the route, and the roads, even in her 'backwards' ride. She was oblivious to the looks her car commanded flying down the city streets, lost in her own thoughts.

When she arrived she parked her car up out front of the store, chuckling at the red car hanging off the roof. She lifted the rear seat to reveal the two pressurized air tanks. She'd already made sure the system was shut down, but she checked the pressure readings on the tank gauges again, just to be sure, before using the wrench attached to the lines to crack the fittings loose and unscrew the tubes from the bottles. She then popped the canisters out of the cages holding them in place and hauled them out of the car. She slammed the door closed with her foot, carefully making sure her rubber soled flip flop connected with the rubber trim near the bottom, not the intricate paint.

She had to set one tank down to get the door open and clicked her doors locked while her hand was free. She then struggled through the door, carrying two 10 pound canisters not the hardest thing she'd ever done but still rather awkward. She was looking down to make sure she didn't trip when she found herself relieved of one of her burdens. She looked up in shock to find Jim smiling down at her.

"I never expected to see you again!" he chuckled. "So what're these?"

Tempest grinned. "My nitrous bottles."

Jim grinned back. "Bet you're finding this uncomfortable." It was clear he found that amusing.

"Maybe a little. What're you doing here? I can't imagine that there's much call for SWAT officers inside an auto parts store."

Jim started back toward the counter where Harry stood waiting, with her trailing him, before he answered. "I'm doing some routine investigation work today. Shipments of high end tuner kit are going missing and I was asked to start asking around the local racer supply stores. Harry here was just telling me he didn't know anything about it." Jim looked at Tempest, his skill at reading people kicking into over drive. "Maybe I should be asking you if you know anything, aye?"

"What could I know? You've seen my licence. I'm small time and not from around. Just here to get my bottles filled Harry," Tempest said, looking at Harry instead of Jim in the hope a break from his penetrating gaze would help her get her bearings back. Harry was clearly looking for an escape route.

"I'll fill 'em for you, won't take ten minutes," Harry answered, taking the blue bottle from Tempest as she passed it across the counter.

"Can't someone else do it?" Jim asked. "We're not done talking."

"Wouldn't trust anything to do with that car to anyone else, not even something as simple as this. I'll be right back." Harry took the second bottle from Jim and headed into the back.

"You're something of a minor celebrity here, small time or not, aren't you? How'd you get to know Harry so well in such a short time?"

Tempest could tell he was suspicious of her, and she had only herself to blame for getting momentarily flustered over the stolen auto parts statement. But when he's said they were onto someone stealing auto parts, and she'd known 'someone' was Vince and Bryce, she'd panicked a little before she could catch herself, remind herself that of course the stolen shipments were reported, and of course it was being investigated, but Vince and Bryce knew what they were doing. But the thought of proud, headstrong Vince in prison just made her feel sick. How would someone like him ever survive it? "I'm just grateful to him is all. He helped my cousin arrange all the sponsorship for my car, gave us the parts to finish the build. Its why the name of the store is on the front bumper. 'Sides, he just don't want someone else to screw up and end up screwing my car. He can't afford to replace it."

"So your cousin and his friends, they know Harry pretty well then?" Jim was obviously in full on cop mode, despite casual jeans and polo shirt being his attire of choice.

"I wouldn't say they know him. Dom does a lot of business here with Harry. It's more a business thing than a friendship." Tempest was glad her voice held steady now, that she was able to stay casual. She leaned onto the counter. "You know, like maybe you know the guy you buy your ammo from, and you'd say hi to him on the street and stuff, but he's not really your friend. You just do a lot business with him, enough to know him to see him."

Jim nodded. "Since that's going to take at least another five minutes, come say hi to someone with me." Jim led her out of the store, and when they stepped out into the sun, Tempest realized that his truck was a mere two parking spots down the row. If she hadn't been caught up into her own little world she might have realized. As they walked up to the vehicle a huge furry head immerged out of an open rear window.

"You brought your dog! And left the poor thing in the car in the heat."

"I left the windows down! He won't jump out!" Jim was quick to defend himself.

Tempest opened the rear door of the truck. "Come on sweetheart. Harry won't mind if you come enjoy the air con for a few minutes. I bet I can even talk him into getting you some water."

Jim could only watch as his very well trained police dog followed a practical stranger into the store, following hot on her heals, panting up at her with a happy smile on his canine face. "Ruined him for the work I got him for. I told you this would happen."

Tempest grinned back over her shoulder. "A police man should know better than to leave an animal in a car on a hot day." She walked back up to the counter and the dog sat down beside her. She called into the back of the store, "Harry, you got some cool water and a bowl around anywhere?"

Harry appeared from around the corner and walked over to where Tempest stood, Jim beside her on the other side of the dog. "I have water and a coffee mug. Why?" Harry looked down over his counter. "That is a big dog."

"He's a big dog some big mean police officer left in a hot truck," Tempest answered, looking at Jim not Harry.

"I didn't intend to be here more than a few minutes! How was I supposed to know you'd show up here?"

"A few minutes is too long. He's a police dog. You should have just put a leash on him and brought him in with you. Who was gonna say anything?"

"You didn't even put a leash on him."

"I'm not a cop, I don't have to worry about it."

Jim threw up his hands. "The fact I _am _a cop doesn't really figure into your world does it?"

"Nope, not really." She grinned. She saw as Harry looked at her speculatively before walking back into the rear area of the store. She started to rub the dog's huge ears, and watched as he closed his eyes in bliss. "You know, you never even told me his name."

"You're just going to get him all attached to you and break his heart when you leave."

"You and I both know Shepherds are a one person dog. He'll be fine."

Jim looked down at where his dog was leaned against her legs with his eyes closed, not even remotely on alert, as he should be, given he was surrounded by strangers. He watched the way the girl's long slender fingers danced over the head and ears of his dog, and was jealous of his dog. He shook his head with a rueful smile, before taking the glass of water Harry had returned with and setting it on the floor. "His name is Sarge."

"Well, that's original." She rolled her eyes.

He watched the dog's pink tongue lap water. "What if you didn't break his heart? What if you stayed here and kept him company?"

Tempest snapped her eyes up to meet Jim's. "Are you asking me to stay here with you?"

"No, I'm asking you to stay here with Sarge. He just happens to live with me." Jim gave her a playful grin.

"I have a dog of my own back home to get back to, a life too. Not that it isn't a great offer, but I can't."

"This over the punk at your cousins?"

"No, its over the fact I don't want to live in America, and have a life of my own in my own country to get back to, a job to do and friends to hang out with. Besides, how you gonna be the cop with a street racer living with him, huh?"

Jim shrugged. "Who needs to know?"

"Everyone if I ever get caught. Besides that, I have to go home. I have an apartment and two more cars and a dog, family."

"So you go home, pack up, do what you have to do, and come back."

"Maybe someday. Won't be any time soon."

"You still have my number, it won't change. If you do come back, let me know? Even if its just to grab a coffee and catch up, aye?"

"Yeah, of course."

Before Jim could say anything else, Harry returned with her nitrous bottles. Before Tempest could grab them, Jim did. "Walk with me and I'll carry these to your car."

"I can carry them myself."

"I've no doubt you can. But why should you when I'm here." Jim started for the door. "Sarge, heel."

The dog got up reluctantly to walk with Jim to the door. Tempest fell into step on his other side. She clicked her car unlocked and took one of the tanks from Jim, before opening the door and fitting it back into the bracket under the seat. She held her hand out for the second tank.

"You got lucky there was room under there for those."

"Yeah, easier to not have to explain them, and I appreciate having a back seat." She pushed the flipped up seat bottom back down to cover the reinstalled and hooked up bottles.

"You still not gonna tell me why I couldn't find your system in the engine bay?"

"And ruin someone else's night? Besides, if you know as little about cars as you let on, you wouldn't understand even if I did tell you."

Jim pulled a face. "So officially, when are you headed out for good?"

"Sunday, Monday at a stretch."

"So no time to meet for dinner before then? I'm certain Sarge could change your mind if you gave him a chance."

"I'm previously engaged tonight and if I stay the whole day tomorrow, I'm sure I'll spend it with my cousin."

Jim nodded. "Well then." He shrugged slightly.

Tempest had no better idea how she should properly part ways. "I better go pay Harry and head for home."

"Ok."

"Ok."

"See you around," Jim finally replied, after a moment thinking what else he could say. There was no right thing to say in such a situation.

"Yeah, see you," Tempest replied, unable to stop the feeling that washed over her, a feeling that told her this was just the first of many hard, bittersweet goodbyes she'd be making. She fought a melancholy feeling, a need call Jim back rather than watch him walk away, and tell him she'd changed her mind. That this goodbye with a man she hardly knew could not be the beginning of the end unless she let it. But in the end she accepted her fate with a sigh and headed back into the shop, unwilling to watch Jim drive away.


	70. Of Tasting Pain and Not Thinking of You

AN: This is the last chapter of the story. Its finished, finally. 3 years later! Better late than never they say. Response to the ending will dictate whether I press forward with part 2. Its started but not finished. This story has been fun. I'm sad to see it end even though I'm glad I finally finished it. Reviews gratefully accepted.

**The Funeral of a Good Girl**

By – _TempestRaces_

**Chapter 70** – Tasting Pain and not Thinking of You Again

"How the hell do you know the traffic cop on a first name basis?" Harry called to her the second she crossed the threshold of the store.

"Long story," she hedged.

"I've got enough time for this."

She shrugged, a flippant motion of one shoulder. "He pulled me over."

"And?"

"He said if I went out to dinner with him, he'd let me off, and make sure I didn't get hassled again while I was here. I took him up on his offer."

"You dated a traffic cop, while staying at Dominic's, and lived to tell about it? How'd you manage that?"

"Dom didn't seem too bothered really. Only did it because I was pissed at Vince. But he's a nice guy, Jim. Not a traffic cop anymore either. He's SWAT now."

"Wait, what do you have to do with Vince?"

Tempest turned from flippant to embarrassed. "Um, well. We've had a bit of an on again off again thing since I been down here. When I got stopped by Jim we were off again, and I wasn't happy about how we came to be that way."

"So Vince has a thing for you, and a traffic cop has a thing for you. Which one do you have a thing for?"

"Neither!" she scowled. Harry gave her a knowing look. "Well, Vince, but I should be saying Jim, so I'm sticking with neither."

"Why should you be saying Jim?"

"Why do you think?" she asked sarcastically, before sighing. "Because he's normal. And nice. And older than me. Ready to be a man, not a boy in a fast car, living a fast life. He's got a house, and a dog, and a truck and a _job. _He's got a real life, and if I could be serious about him, he'd be serious about me and we could have a _life_ together. Vince wants a pretty girl on his arm when he wants her there, and wants to be free to be single when it suits him." She shook her head with a depreciating laugh. "And it's been wild and crazy and so not how I am, but it isn't reality. It's just been a fantasy that has to end. What'm I gonna do? Move in with Vince and race cars and buy stolen auto parts for the rest of my life while he runs around behind my back when he gets bored? Harry, that's not a life, it's a bad movie! Dom and his team, Vince and Jesse included live a life that's more like a bad movie and one of these days the whole house of cards is going to come tumbling down and I'm sorry but while its been fun, I don't want to be there when the dust settles and I wish Jesse wasn't going to be either."

"Yeah, fair enough. But you couldn't be a street racer living with a cop either."

"Jim doesn't think it'd be a problem. And it doesn't matter because I'm not moving to L.A. Not to live with Vince, not to live with a cop. Just plain not."

Harry looked at her speculatively. "What if you did it not to live with a cop, or a rag tag bunch of street racers, but to be the head mechanic in the newest venture of the Racer's Edge? Maybe Dominic's been taking a huge section of business I could be having away from me. I should be fitting what I sell in house. Move here, work for me. I promise you the salary will make it worth your while."

"Harry, all you know about me is I've more balls than brains, and good taste in cars. You don't know that I'm good enough at what I do to run a shop for you."

"I know you're almost fully qualified at 19. That's pretty impressive. I know Jesse is some kinda prodigy. I know Dom hasn't banished you out of the DT bays yet. All of that tells me you're qualified to run a shop for me. So what'd you say?"

"I say no way. I can't do that to my family, to my work." It was clear there was no heart in her refusal.

Harry was pretty sure there was more to it. More along the lines of her not being willing to do it if Vince didn't ask it of her himself. She wouldn't come down and stay in his life out of coincidence. Too stubborn. "Leave him, come work for me, date the cop. Nice respectable day job for you."

"Maybe. Not likely. I'll think on it from home, let you know." She looked up at the clock on the wall. "Fuck, is that the right time?"

Harry confirmed it on his watch. "Yep."

"Damn it. I'm gonna be home after 6 at this rate, and have to listen to Dom whimper about it. Son of a bitch."

Harry laughed. "Like you care what Dom thinks about it."

"Not a good god damn, but I care about not listening to him bitch about it. And the third degree from Vince 'bout where I been. And god help us all if it comes out it's talking to Jim because Mia then starts calling him hot cop and that just sets Vince off worse."

"You sound like you fit in there pretty good already you know. You're dressed even less appropriately for shop work then the average Letty outfit, you have all of them pegged, and you're related to Jesse."

"Yeah, and how well you think it'll go over if I come down here and open up a shop in direct competition with Dominic?"

"I don't really care how well it goes over with Dominic. You race him once, you beat him, you'll become a princess in the scene. People will still pour in here, wanting everything you got, instead of everything he got."

"I've already beaten Dominic. You get a big rusha business yet?"

"When'd you beat Dominic?"

She told him the story, before asking "And what'm I supposed to do with my illegal car if I come here?"

"I'll have it registered as a 240sx for you. I have some connections. It all makes sense T. As well paid as I'm sure you are, it's nothing compared to what I can offer you. Your own shop to run, a staff to oversee, sponsorship in the import scene, a salary any mechanic would kill for and I don't care if they're top dog at Porsche, you'll still be making better coin. And to top it all off, you'll be competing against Dominic's shop. And likely winning."

It was tempting, very very tempting. "Harry, I'll think about it. I'm still going home, but I'll seriously think about it, ok?"

"Yeah. You better jet."

"Yeah. See you around." She headed for the door with a wave, lost in thought. If she did what Harry was asking, she'd go from being a big fish in a very small pond to a big fish in a very big pond. He was giving her everything she wanted on one gilded platter. Run a tuner shop, not a hum drum tires, brakes and lubes shop. Run it, build a rep as a top tuner and racer. Take the wind out of Dominic's overgrown sails on every level. Get to be close to Jesse all the time, have a chance at a go of it with Vince. Or Jim, if she decided to acknowledge she had a brain. A way to make sure the car was legal. She decided, as she slid into her car, that she would see how the rest of her stay went and go from there.

She whipped her car out if the parking spot and tore off down the street the Racer's Edge was situated on, heading toward Dom's. She pulled up to the curb out front of the house 15 minutes later and sighed, wondering how much she was going to hear from Dom, or Vince, for making Dom pissed in the first place.

When she let herself in the open front door, she found everyone sitting around the dining table already.

"Where you been?" Jesse asked, curious.

"Shooting the shit with Harry, lost track of time. Any chow left?"

"I saved you a plate, otherwise the answer'd be no," Mia replied, moving to get up. "It'sf in the oven."

"No worries, I'll grab it myself." Tempest headed into the kitchen and used the dish towel to lift her plate out of the oven. She pulled off the foil.

"So what do you and Harry have to talk about for 2 hours?" Dom asked in a dangerous tone of voice.

"Stuff," she answered with a shrug, not willing to tell him she's been thinking up names for the shop she was going to open to compete with his on the way home in case she changed her mind and ended up getting Jesse's hopes up for no reason. "Cars, racing, modifications."

"How do you even know Harry well enough to decide to talk cars with him for two hours?" Dom proved unwilling to let the topic go.

"How well do I have to know anyone to talk to them about something they own a store full of like auto parts? Besides, I ran into some other people I know while I was there." Tempest sat in the chair Leon had vacated when he'd finished eating.

"Like who?" Now it was Vince's turn to ask questions in a suspicious tone. She didn't know that many people that weren't with them around the table.

"Jim," she answered with a shrug. "He's been investigating some sort of stolen auto parts ring. He wanted to know if Harry knew anything about it, and he was still at the Edge when I was down getting my tanks filled."

"And what'd Harry tell Jim?" Vince snarled.

"Nothing. Hard to tell him anything when he doesn't know nothin'."

"How do you know what Harry knows?"

Tempest turned to Dominic. "Fuck, when did any of this become your damn business dude? I went out, I came back when I was done. Now I'ma eat my dinner and go get ready because I assume after all the afternoon prep work we are going racing tonight?"

"So you mean you might actually try to look like a girl if you come with us?" Dom asked.

"Meow!" Letty interjected. "You two fight like you were brother and sister!"

"My genetic background never coulda produced such a Neanderthal."

"Hey!" Mia broke in, mock indignation on her face. "You better watch the insults involving genetics."

"Oops," Tempest replied with a huge grin.

Vince found himself grinning along with her, despite the fact he knew he had been pissed off about her talking to the hot cop a second ago. Having someone else around who didn't just take Dom's shit, and got along so well with everyone else was nice. He watched her for another moment before the panic started again. There he went again, imagining next week with her in it. But she wasn't going to be. He stood up abruptly. "I gotta get ready for tonight."

"Ok," Tempest answered, confusion evident at his abrupt tone. She got up shortly after and went to collect her clothes for the night while Vince was still in the shower. She elected to shower upstairs for the first time in her stay, and went into what she knew to be Mia's room to get ready rather than go back down stairs. She was mostly ready by the time Mia came into her room to finish doing her makeup, having gotten showered and dressed before dinner to spread out the load on the shower.

She turned up downstairs in a denim skirt, a red tank top and platform flip flop sandals only to find everyone else waiting on her.

'Thought you didn't do skirts?" Letty asked.

Tempest flipped the front of the skirt up. "Its shorts!"

"Classy," Letty laughed as she answered.

"Classier than flashin' my underoos."

"True that," Leon broke in, grinning. "We goin' or what?"

"Well, I ain't in any hurry since I already proved I can give mosta ya'll a head start and still beat you there," Tempest stuck her tongue out at Leon.

"You ain't taken me on yet," Leon reminded.

Tempest only smirked in answer and Vince saw red. He couldn't help but take it as Tempest saying 'depends how you mean' to Leon and he didn't like it. "Let's get the fuck outta here."

"Yes sir prince surly," she retorted with a sneer. "Same place as last time?" she asked Letty.

"Yeah. Why?"

"See you there." She stalked over to the door.

"You know the way?" Jesse called.

"Yeah, I'll be ok."

She left the house and a second later they heard first the rumble of her engine before the deep bass of the latest Kidd Rock song started to vibrate the house. A split second later an ear splitting squeal faded off into the distance. With a look at each other, and then a pointed group look at Vince, the rest filtered out into their rides.

They found her parked up beside a couple randoms, no one they really knew. Or rather that was where they found her car. She was actually nowhere to be seen. Vince resolved not to go looking for her. It was his small act of distance and he convinced himself it was valid and helpful, would change something. He watched Jesse slither off through the crowd, no doubt looking after the safety of someone who could take far better care of herself than anyone in their crowd could ever hope to do. He turned to Dom, started talking shop, and started trying to forget to remember.

Jesse found his cousin with the tall blonde who'd already started so much trouble on their team. He walked up to her anyway, even though he was concerned that action could be taken as approval of the enemy. "Hey," he addressed his cousin.

"Hey. Sorry I took off before. Things are just," she paused before finishing with a shrug, "getting weird."

"What'd you mean, weird?" Jesse asked.

Tempest shrugged. "I dunno. Just, weird." She sighed. "Vince was being weird," she finally finished. "He's been acting strange all day."

"Well, you're going to leave us in like two days T. He really likes you and you're going to leave him. Of course he's feeling weird."

Tempest decided she didn't want to finish the conversation in front of Craig so she started to walk away, dragging Jesse with her, with a parting, pained smile at Craig. "Well, he's never indicated he'd want me to stay, so why would I decide I was going to over him? Of course I'm going to leave if he doesn't ask me to stay! I mean, I might leave even if he did, but he doesn't even want me to enough to take the risk anyway."

Jesse huffed out a breath. "Well, you could just do it because you want to and damn the rest. Don't you want to be able to see each other more often than once every 10 years? Don't you like racing against some real competition for once?"

"You know the answer is yes on both counts but Jesse, it's not like you're asking me to move down the street. You're asking me to move my entire life 3000 miles away into another country. You're asking me to give up a good job, a sure thing, over the possibility of a job with Dominic, a job he'll torture me with and a job he'll make sure is full of stupid tasks that will slowly make me forget my entire education." She felt bad for lying to her cousin, for not telling him that she could move and take the job with Harry, but she justified it to herself as a necessary evil.

"Can't you at least think about it?"

"Haven't I told you that I'll think about it, in another while, when I have my licence done?"

"Fine," Jesse answered petulantly. His childish tone and the look on his face made Tempest smile.

"You're such a brat. It doesn't seem possible that you're older than me."

"Yeah, yeah." Jesse said, rolling his eyes.

"Come on, let's go see who's going to get their race on," Tempest allowed herself to be lead back over to the team by Jesse, even though she was still not impressed with the way Vince was acting.

She didn't become any more ok with his behaviour over the course of the evening. This was mostly due to the fact he more or less ignored her in favour of acting too relaxed and happy in the company of Dominic as the latter stood surrounded by his troupe of admirers. The attitude of which made Tempest want to throw up as they fawned over some overgrown child who could simply drive very fast in a straight line.

She felt her nose turn up in a disgusted sneer, almost against her will, because god knew she didn't want to be thinking about Dominic, or Vince, if he was going to continue acting like a spoilt child, and sneering at them seemed to let on she was thinking about them, and she didn't want anyone to know she was. She looked away, toward her car, and fought a yawn. Races were a lot less exciting if you weren't racing.

The next thing she knew Letty was tapping her shoulder. "Where the hell you livin' girl? Somewhere else, cause I was tapping your shoulder for five minutes before you looked at me," Letty said on a laugh. "Hector wants to know if you want to race?" Letty made a dismissive hand gesture, "Some cousin of his and a couple other kids. Should be a cake walk for you."

"Why don't you want to do it?" Tempest asked. She was curious why Letty wouldn't jump at the chance to take some stupid little boy's money off them.

"They want to race the Skyline. Not so much concerned about the driver as they are the car. Likely think that it'll be easier to beat you than Leon."

Tempest laughed out loud before she could stop herself. She looked at Letty with a smirk. "If they think Dom is so great, and watched me beat him with a one second handicap, why on earth would they think they can take me?"

Letty shrugged. "Dunno. Boys are stupid," she said with a grin.

Tempest shot a glance at Vince. "Boy do you have that right."

"Boys that live in the Toretto house take stupid to a whole new level," Letty agreed, without actually stating what she was agreeing with.

"That's plain to see," Tempest responded, but she did it with a laugh. She figured she could either laugh or cry, and due to the public nature of her position, she had to chose to laugh.

"So, you in?" Letty queried, trying to break the mood.

"Yeah, why the fuck not," Tempest replied. She watched Letty go off with the thousand dollars she passed over, heading for her car after she watched Hector take the money.

Tempest lined her car up when told to do so. She sat on the line waiting for things to get under way, and found that she just didn't care about the outcome of the race. She briefly toyed with the idea of throwing the race just to make Dominic look bad. Like if she could beat him, but these boys could beat her, clearly it meant he wasn't that great.

Then she decided she couldn't lose on purpose, not even to make Dom look stupid. She was too competitive.

When the start was called she ran her car up through its paces like a robot, doing everything right, but without much enthusiasm. Her mood was strange, and melancholy and just didn't lend well to excitement. Not even that generated by racing the Skyline down a public street in the dead of night at speeds topping 140 miles an hour.

She noted she'd won the race with a detached air, and took her winnings from Hector with a distracted smile and a brief thanks, before heading back over to her car and sliding onto the driver's seat. She couldn't bring herself to be in a group of happy, excited people. She didn't share their mood and felt like she would only bring down the tone with her own subdued air.

She didn't know why it had suddenly occurred to her that in one day's time she would be leaving. She'd known that from the moment she rolled into town. She'd never thought of her visit as anything less than a vacation. A moment out of time. She simply hadn't expected to meet so many people she would miss. She hadn't expected to fit in so well, to find her vacation starting to feel like home.

She hadn't expected to like Harry so much. He'd become a friend in such a short time. Someone she could so easily see as her boss in name, while she bossed him around his own store daily and ran his new shop.

She hadn't expected to meet Jim, and find herself wishing she could fall for him and make a life for herself with him. Hadn't expected to find herself on a date with a man who looked like him, and talked like him, and treated her like he had treated her, and turn him down for someone with half the integrity, half the class.

She hadn't expected to meet Bryce, and immediately be able to see herself hanging out with him in some trashy bar several nights a week for the foreseeable future.

She hadn't expected to genuinely like Mia, Letty, and Leon so much that she could easily imagine living with them like a family. She enjoyed her apartment at home. Enjoyed not sharing the space, not answering to anyone else for where her socks were left, when she washed her dishes. But she enjoyed being in the middle of the mess of the Toretto house almost as much. When she and Dom weren't at each other's throats that is.

Mostly, she hadn't expected to meet anyone like Vince. To find herself imagining what it would be like to be with him, in a tangible, real sense. Not in this way they were playing at, seeming to be acting like things were permanent and would carry on long after the sun set tomorrow evening. Even though they both knew that unless one of them did something drastic, this was not the case.

It was clear from how he'd treated her all day that he had realized unless he said something to her about wanting her to stick around she wasn't going to. It was equally clear to her from how he'd been acting that he didn't intend to do so. And because she didn't intend to make the first step in this situation, because of how many wrong steps Vince had already made, she knew that her interlude was going to come to a screaming halt come Monday morning.

And she didn't want to look at how that made her feel for fear she couldn't keep functioning until she left if she did. Getting to see Jesse again had been wonderful, and they were just as close as they'd been as children. She wished she could spend every day within driving distance of him again, like they'd been when they were growing up. But she just didn't know how she was going to go on without Vince in her life. And being around him longer while he wasn't really in her life wasn't an option. He had to put himself there, before she wanted to be around him full time.

And that was why she couldn't bring herself to swallow her pride and ask him what he wanted from the future, if he saw her there when he asked himself what the future held. It was too much like begging him to ask her to stay out of pity, or out of settling for second best. For what he could have easily instead of what he had to exert effort for. And she wasn't willing to lower herself and her self worth low enough to be around to be treated like the consolation prize.

Ultimately she knew the reason why she couldn't stay without his asking was simple. Because he'd treated her like he didn't care one way or the other the whole time they had been together and if he'd changed his mind, and he did care after all, _he _had to make that clear. She was willing to take a chance and make the effort, but she was a prideful person with her fair share of self respect herself and while she could humble herself to overlook everything he'd done to date, he had to meet her in the middle.

She knew it was her secret hope that he'd surprise her and come out with a shocking pledge of devotion tomorrow, and beg her to stay with him, not to leave. She also knew, like most outlandish fantasies, it was never likely to happen. She tried to shake the mood off with a sigh. She knew if she didn't want everyone hovering over her and asking her what was wrong she was going to need to go participate in the group, and act like she wanted to enjoy her last Saturday night party with the group.

Not hide in her car like a recluse. She knew that clearly said to everyone looking that she was already getting ready to hide and lick her wounds in private and she didn't want to let on to anyone she had any wounds. So with a burst of effort she didn't want to give she pushed the car door open and got out, scanning the crowd for Jesse or Leon. She was already figuring she needed to put some distance between her and Vince.

So she plastered a smile on her face, and she talked shop with the people who came and went from around where she stood. She laughed when she was expected to laugh, and cracked the odd sarcastic one liner. She tried to paste a normal facade over her actions, figured she did a good job of looking like a happy race winner. At the very least, no one called her on it.

And when the night was over she flew through the crowd of fast cars toward the fort, trying not to dwell on the fact it could likely be the last time she ever 'came home' to Dominic's place. Ever 'came home' to Vince. Like they had any right to act like they were anything to each other that involved coming home to each other.

And when she parked up her car and came into the house and made a drink, she pretended she was ok with the fact she was hanging out with Mia and Letty, that Vince was no where around. She pretended that she hadn't expected—anticipated—that this would be the last night that they would be them, and would put on the same dysfunctional couple act they'd done at every party at Dom's since her arrival. She looked around for him and again he was nowhere to be found. So she had another drink and faked another smile.

She fought the panic building inside. She was going home the day after tomorrow. She had decided to push her departure back to Monday only because it gave her a day to be hung over and lazy tomorrow. It gave her a day to recover from enjoying this last night with him. And he was nowhere to be found. And it hurt, worse than she ever could have imagined, that he didn't want something she wanted so much, something she had assumed he would want as well.

But still, she smiled, and she drank, and she danced, and she chatted. It hurt so much that no one could know. It was stupid that it hurt so much, and so no one could know. But damn it, she'd wanted it to end on a good note. And perhaps that was wishful thinking. But she wanted it to end on an _ended _note.Not to just avoid each other until she was gone. Until they were each just _faded_, like exhaust fumes on a cold morning.

Much as she fought the urge, she constantly found her eyes wandering the crowd, scanning for him. He wasn't in any of his normal haunts. She eventually found herself making excuses to the girls so she could wander off, on the pretence of needing another drink and the bathroom. She used the bathroom excuse as her reason to go upstairs and scan the rooms. There was no sign of him, so she waited her turn for the bathroom and used it while she was up there. Then she made her way into the kitchen for another drink, and never saw any sign of him.

Fresh drink in hand she wandered into the clear night air of the backyard. She found Dominic sat alone and promptly turned around to re-enter the house before he could see her. She could only guess she wasn't quick enough when he gruffly called her name. She turned around reluctantly at his call. "Yeah?" She watched his shoulders slump as if in defeat.

Dom sighed. "He wants you to stay you know?"

"That's not how it looks from where I stand." She took a few steps closer toward the picnic table where Dom sat.

Dom shook his head. "He doesn't know how to admit it. He doesn't know what it would say about him if you said no. He doesn't know how he could accept it, what it would do to him if you said no, so he won't ask. But he wants you to stay."

Tempest sneered at the thought. "He's gone out of his way to make sure I know he doesn't really give half a fuck. Why on earth would I believe you about this?"

Dom couldn't fight the smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth. "Do you really think I'd make up anything that could see you decide to stick around longer than tomorrow?"

Taking his words in the spirit of light teasing they were meant, and surprising herself in the process, Tempest smiled back despite herself. "No, I guess not." She wandered closer to where Dominic was sat. "But this is not how you tell a girl you want a shot, you know?"

"I know." Dom sighed, deeper than before. "But Vee," he shook his head, "he didn't have too much of a shot of learning things about girls growing up."

"What do you mean?" Tempest asked, puzzled.

"Not my story to tell," Dom answered, his tone deep and gravelly with some emotion she couldn't put her finger on. "Let's just leave it at my mom died too young for Vince to have learned how to be a couple from my mom and dad, and there wasn't any sort of role model for anything but violence and tears at Vince's house."

Tempest had known as much about Vince's childhood by the small hints Bryce had allowed to drop into conversation, about Vince never being the kind of man who would hit a woman. But hearing Dom put it so blankly shook her a little. "I'd gathered a little from Bryce."

"There's depths to Vince I don't even know about," Dom replied. He was unsure why he was having such a normal conversation with the strange woman now sat on the table beside him. He could only figure he'd been hurt by the fact that Vince clearly was close to Bryce, but had never deemed the team worthy of an introduction, even though Tempest had merited one and he'd only known the girl a few days. "I don't even know who Bryce is, but clearly Vince knows him so well, and he's introduced him to you, but never us."

Tempest shrugged, not picking up on Dom's hurt. "Part of what scares Vince about me is how he thinks I blur the lines between his two lives, and I really don't think he knows how to blend the two well enough yet for him to truly want me around Dom, no matter what you and Bryce and Mia and Letty and Jess all think about it. He thinks he wants me here in one second, and then gets fearful and resentful of what me here would mean the next. He wants Mia not only because he likes her, and has known her for years and doesn't know how to not have a crush on her, but also because he can leave her here with you when it suits him, when he's living his Bryce life, and she's just safely still here only fitting in with his life with you when he's done."

"He could learn to blend the two, if you were willing to show him how." Dom stated.

She could see he was only trying to help his friend, to do what he thought would be best, maybe even best for her as well, best for everyone, but he just didn't understand. "I'm only 19 years old. The drama of the last two weeks has been almost more than I could take on about a thousand occasions. I don't have it in me to teach him. I don't have it in me to bend far enough before I break. I don't know how to cope while he learns. I don't know how to deal with you in ways that won't have us about to go at each other daily. I don't fit in here as well as everyone is pretending."

Dom nodded sombrely once, to show he understood. "I still don't like you that much."

Tempest laughed out loud softly. "The feeling's mutual baldy."

Dom chuckled, stood up. "I should go find Letty."

"I should go find Jess." Tempest drained her drink and stood up to follow Dominic back into the house. She spend another hour just chatting with the team, feeling more relaxed after her talk with Dom, even if she was more resigned to the inevitable after putting it so black and white to another person.

Around three am she decided that enough was enough. Stupid or not, need to start putting distance between them or not, tomorrow was going to be all about saying goodbye to Jesse. Tonight needed to be about them saying goodbye to each other. It was the last chance they were going to have. She set off to finish her search for Vince. She tried the last place she had left that she hadn't already checked. The basement. She didn't figure he would have gone to bed so early, but you just never knew when he was in a mood with the world. She headed down the dark stairs into the cellar, not bothering with a light. She knew where everything was well enough now to function without one.

She headed down the stairs, stopping by some instinct she didn't care to name at the bottom of the stairs. There was a couple in the den, being illuminated softly by the faint blue light from the TV someone had left on, but which due to the lateness of the hour was only showing the plain blue channel the stations put on after broadcasting finished for the day.

As she stood on the bottom stair trying to figure out how to sneak past them without interrupting them on her way to Vince's room, she studied them against her will. She didn't want to stare, and knew she wouldn't want someone staring at her during a heavy make out session, but it was a bit like a train wreck, hard to look away from.

She didn't know if she would blame intoxication, or disbelief for how long it took her to figure it out. Maybe she always knew and just couldn't let herself admit it. But there came a second in time when it was too obvious to deny. While the woman was just a bottle blonde racer chaser, interchangeable with any number of her kind, the man with his tongue down her throat and her hand down his undone pants was Vince.

She could pinpoint the exact second she felt her heart break in half. The moment he leaned toward her to bite the side of her neck, she realized he was actually doing what she obviously actually knew he was doing, deny it to herself or not, and when she couldn't deny it anymore, her heart snapped in two. With some measure of dignity and decorum she didn't know how she could still posses, she turned silently and crept up the stairs. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of a catty scene.

She wouldn't make herself no better than that whore with her hands all over someone else's man. She wouldn't allow him to think, to know, that he meant enough to her that this betray was actual. That it cut her to the bone. That he had chosen to do this, and allow her to see this, on tonight of all nights. So she crept slowly up the stairs, and kept the tears in her eyes from running over as she dashed across the kitchen and lounge, past the few remaining stragglers. She thanked God that her things were still in Mia's room. That she could quietly pack and escape.

She was too destroyed to question her fitness to drive, to question the sanity of taking off in the middle of the night, while intoxicated. She only knew she was leaving this place, this house, this time, and this feeling, now. She wasn't going to talk about it. She wasn't going to admit she was hurt. She wasn't going to give him the effort of pretending she wasn't. She was just going to leave it all behind, and run like hell, because it was all she could see _to_ do.

She tossed her things haphazardly into her bags, not really caring if she missed items, or how the things got placed into the bags. Flight was the only thing on her mind. She couldn't even bring herself to admit to anyone she was leaving. Telling them she was leaving meant admitting why. No one would just accept she'd decided she had to go home in the middle of Saturday night after a party when she'd told them all she was staying to Monday. And they were just _not_ talking about it.

Glad Mia was still downstairs chasing people out of the house and tidying up as they left, Tempest turned on the light in Mia's room, found a notepad and pen, and hastily started to pen Jesse a note. It was hard to know what to put, because after what she'd seen, she refused to be sorry for leaving, not even to Jesse. There was no way she could face Vince tomorrow, in any capacity, after how callously he'd tossed away their last night together and thus everything which had come before.

Leaving the finished note on Mia's bed, not willing to go downstairs to Jesse's room and risk a repeat performance, Tempest snuck down the stairs and out the front door silently.

She didn't think she'd ever found herself wishing the Skyline had a more silent exhaust on it before, but she heartily wished for it now. All she could pray was that everyone would assume it was a late staying guest finally going home. That no one would expect it to be her, so no one would question it or come looking for her 'til morning. They would all assume she was with Vince anyway.

This thought brought a hiccupping sob to her lips. Vince was with some vapid Barbie doll and she was all alone, two days early. Another sob shook her frame and she knew she had to get off the road before either her emotional state or her intoxicated state got her pulled over, and the latter got her tossed in jail. She stopped at the first motel she came across with out of sight parking and paid cash for a room. When daylight came, she was out of L.A.

Seconds after Tempest turned to go back up the stairs, Vince broke away from the woman in his arms. He didn't know he'd been caught out, though it has been his plan all along. He wanted to drive Tempest away from him.

He told himself going in he had the noblest of intentions. That she could do better than him and this would surely make her see that clearly. But he couldn't deny he felt like the biggest fraud when he had no more interest in this idiot he was making out with than he did selling his car or giving up drinking.

His mind knew, even if he wouldn't let it admit it, even to itself that he had done what he had done only because he was scared of what would happen if she didn't leave. She had to go, and he refused to directly drive her away. So he did what he could think of to make her decide to go on her own, with no chance she'd decide to stick around.

'You're an idiot' he told himself as he pushed the blonde away.

"What's wrong?" she questioned in a voice he found like nails on a chalkboard. She was just all wrong!

"Everything!" he snarled in reply. "Just fuck off and leave me alone!" He knew that he had to go find her, before it was too late.

Suddenly he knew they both needed the last night. Hell, he needed it to not be the last night. He needed to tell her he wanted her to stay with him, not to leave. He needed her to choose him. He needed someone to choose him for once. And for her to choose him he had to give her the choice to make. He couldn't ignore that he'd had no interest in the woman he'd been kissing. She'd been a shallow, inadequate replacement for the real thing, and despite her best efforts she hadn't been able to get any sort of response out of him. That had to say something.

He had to find Tempest before it was too late. She hadn't seen what he'd done, his horrid mistake. If she had she'd have kicked off a scene, tried to kill the blonde, tried to kill him. So if she hadn't seen and none of the team had killed him either, that meant no one knew. There was still time to make it all go away. He just had to find Tempest, and grovel at her boot clad feet for making her wait so long for him to come after her. "Get your shit together and get out," he growled at the woman in front of him. He was ashamed to realize he didn't even know her name.

Without waiting to see if she listened to his ordered growl, he turned around and bounded up the stairs. It felt like a weight had been lifted off him. He'd ask her to stay, since it was what she was waiting for—and only what she deserved, he reminded himself—she'd agree to stay with him and he could stop wondering what he was going to do with himself on Monday when she wasn't around. There was no reason he couldn't take a few weeks off. He'd go back with her, help her finalize her plans, pack her stuff. They could drive back together, take the time to find out how it felt to just be them with no one else around to nag or glare or ponder their fate.

Only the team was still in the house when he reached the living room. It seemed as though Mia had just kicked the last straggler out. He hoped the blonde used whatever little brain she had and let herself out the back, but it was a fleeting thought. Finding Tempest was his primary focus.

As if she'd just picked up on his single status, Mia did a double take. "Where's Tempest?" she enquired with a puzzled frown on her face.

"What'd you mean where is she?" Vince asked in return. "I figured she was still with you guys."

"We figured she was with you," Jesse answered.

"Maybe she laid down upstairs and fell asleep," Mia offered. She then headed to the stairs to go check the rooms on the second floor. She returned a second later with a sheet of paper and a glare for Vince. "Her stuff's all gone and this is addressed to Jesse."

Jesse looked up at Mia in confusion. "She's gone?"

"Looks like it, but maybe the answer is in the note."

Jesse unfolded the paper and started to read. He looked up with a furious glare at Vince a moment later. "She saw something unimaginable and decided there was no way she could ever look at you again, and decided she had to leave before you woke up today. What the fuck did you do?"

Vince literally felt the blood drain from his face as he felt all his tender new plans for the future he was going to build with her come crashing down around him, broken on the floor. "Something incredibly stupid." He wouldn't go into any more details. He couldn't. He felt like the world's worse human being that she's seen everything. He couldn't live with himself another day if he had to tell Jesse, Leon, Letty and Dominic what his clever plan to drive a permanent wedge between him and Tempest had been. If he had to explain to them it had been 'for her own good'. As it clearly hadn't been. She was alone in L.A in the middle of the night, having likely driven drunk to where ever she was.

The team yelled and screamed and at one point he thought both Jesse and Dominic were going to deck him but he sat stoically refusing to say a word. Little did they all know, it was the only way he kept the single tear threatening to fall from running down his cheek.

To the team he just looked indifferent, like it didn't matter and around 5am Dom banished him to his room. When he went without a word of protest for being treated like a child, they all shared a look. That single act on Vince's part made it clear there was more to the situation than met the eye. But what could they do? She was gone, and finding one woman in the City of Angels gave new meaning to finding a needle in a haystack.

And then time went on, and Vince went back to being mean, and difficult, and everyone else got on with their routines. If occasionally the phone rang, and Vince answered, and the other party just disconnected, he didn't question it. He just let it ring the next time until someone else answered it and pretended what was left of what was worth anything in his miserable life wasn't on the other end of the call.

And when Dominic bugged him one last time about how he could earn the kind of money Vince could earn, he didn't look too hard at why he was suddenly willing to play along. Why he was willing to put himself so far into harm's way to keep the rest of the team out of it.

As soon as daylight broke, she was out of the motel. She didn't sleep much she knew, but she was at least sober. She knew she could stop for the night somewhere else and actually get some sleep, more confident he couldn't find her in some middle of nowhere town 12 hours outside L.A.

She travelled like a zombie across the USA. She didn't question the route change on the map in her car. She was stopping in Toronto on the way home and there was no questions allowed. She'd told her boss, her mother and that was it. She was taking an extra week away and she didn't even tell them where she was taking it, let alone why.

She turned up on Angelo's driveway after being buzzed through his gates, fell into his arms and sobbed out the whole story.

It took him the whole extra week to put her back together just half way. He took her to Italy, and fed her good food, good wine. Let his mother make a fuss of her. Took her walking on white sand beaches, took her to see the sites tourists never thought to go see. He made her feel like she belonged, which he knew was what she needed more than anything anyway.

On their last night there, he couldn't find her, but had some idea where to look. He walked out onto the balcony off his room in his mother's house, looked off over the beach the house backed onto, and found her walking along the waves alone in the sun set.

She cried at night when she thought no one would ever know. But he knew, and he didn't know what else there was to do for her but let nature take its course. As it had had to for him, when his Arabella had been killed. She would live, she would survive and carry on with her life. What filled him with sadness for her was the question he had in his heart. If this Vincent idiot had really been the one for her, and was as good as dead to her now, would she ever truly love again?

She'd been home for a week when she found herself back on another beach, this one a lot closer to home. It was grey and ominous, as only late August could be. Another year older and none the wiser, she was afraid. She stopped walking and just stood looking out over the water, contemplating as little as she could force herself.

Two weeks away was all it took to make her into someone else totally. She'd walked away, and there were no plans to see him again. She knew she had to get on with her life, to move on. They'd never said goodbye but there were no goodbyes to say. Perhaps he'd said his the best way he could do. Had certainly made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her. Rain started to pepper her face.

She started out into the water, wandered out til the water was up to her chest before allowing herself to float on the surface, waves rocking her softly. The wind picked up and the waves got bigger, tossing her higher and higher before dropping her lower and lower.

She licked her lips, tasted salt and didn't know if it was from the ocean water or her own tears. Either way it tasted like pain. She told herself over and over she wasn't thinking of him again. The waves swelled, ebbed and flowed with greater and greater violence as the storm build. She floated around, watched a huge wave looming darkly on the horizon and coming straight at her, but she didn't do anything to move toward the shore.

She found herself wondering if she'd be better off letting it take her under. Floating alone in the ocean on an abandoned beach in the dead of night, she'd never felt so alone. Then the violent wave did slam into her, took her under. She found herself fighting the pull of an undertow as waves getting ever bigger and bigger tried to take her under.

When she finally reached shore, she had to admit it was the most alive she'd felt in days. She knew that because she fought the waves and undertow, had fought to reach the shore, she wanted to go on.

So now she just had to figure out how to do that without him. And without thinking of him, or speaking to him, or mentioning him, or preferably without even remembering he was alive. Which was going to be hard when he lived with her cousin. And everything about her prize possession reminded her of him. Memories of him rode shotgun in the Skyline every time she turned it on, and there was nothing she could do about it.

With a sigh she picked up her clothes and shoes and headed for her car. Life would go on, it had a funny way of doing so.

Like it or not.

To be continued?


	71. explination

This is just a note to let everyone know, as it wasn't as clear as I'd thought, that Lose The Road is the continuation of this story, and will start just after the movie finishes, 2 years after she ran from L.A. If you didn't think this story was finished, you're right. It was always my intent to write the second half as a separate story. Then I wasn't sure if I was going to do so, as I hadn't written anything in a few years to say the least. But I seem to have found a smaller version of my previous muse, so I've elected to put the second story up, and it can be found under the title Lose The Road. Feel free to drop by and have a look! Thanks all.


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